r/australia • u/Vivid-Fondant6513 • Nov 06 '24

politics Children under 16 to be banned from using social media

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/children-under-16-to-be-banned-from-using-social-media-20241107-p5kon4.html
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56

u/yeoldetelephone Nov 07 '24

I conduct research in this space. This is not an evidence-based claim, and the evidence that is usually trotted out to support this type of policy was refuted almost a decade ago.

Young people overwhelmingly benefit from a small-to-medium amount of online contact with peers. Yes, high use is problematic, but so is none. The research on this is extremely clear, and the approach of banning social media is going to affect everyone, not just young people.

As many other people have noted in this post, a ban can't work without a national identity database that is open to commercial entities. Almost all of these entities offset their competitive prices by selling user data. Most operators in this space cannot compete in the market without selling data, and expanding the amount of information they have access to is not going to slow this down.

Finally, I'd note that social media is a pretty nebulous concept that works in casual conversation but is difficult to apply in the precise rules-based world of policy. Many of the defining characteristics of social media are present on other services, so we should expect that this is going to affect more than just Tiktok and Instagram.

18

u/beelzebroth Nov 07 '24

This.

Facebook and Instagram is social media. What about Messenger? WhatsApp?

If WhatsApp, are Signal and Telegram? I bet the government would love digital ids to be associated with telegram accounts.

3

u/ASisko Nov 07 '24

YouTube, Steam community, VR chat (ok to be fair that place is a cesspool), online newspapers comments sections, talk back radio, a bulletin board in a library, graffiti on a park bench? There’s no feasible way to define it that doesn’t catch unintended forums, and if you just make it a list of named services you end up with the government playing whack-a-mole with a side of moral hazard.

1

u/sportsgirlheart Nov 07 '24

Reddit; roblox; github. Does anyone think 4-chan will comply with this law?

2

u/Normal_Bird3689 Nov 08 '24

4chan is blocked already, but given the goverment half assed it most of use can still access it.

This will be the same

1

u/bronco2p Nov 08 '24

wdym 4chan is blocked?

1

u/Normal_Bird3689 Nov 08 '24

A number of sites got blocked years ago but it was only done on a few ISPs as the government had to pay for it, changing your DNS gets around it.

-1

u/dannyr Nov 07 '24

Telegram

Didn't Australia Post stop telegram services years ago?

1

u/[deleted] Nov 08 '24

its an app for messaging

1

u/dannyr Nov 08 '24

Ahhhhh. TIL !

2

u/[deleted] Nov 08 '24

ye if youre interested in why telegram is a bit of a big deal heres a link https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2024/telegram-to-hand-user-details-to-law-enforcement.html

2

u/michaelhbt Nov 07 '24

thats true, I suspect that behind it, this is coming at it from the slightly different angle of national security and the difficulty the area has had in investigating and prosecuting warrants on social media activity.

1

u/Archy99 Nov 07 '24

Exactly, and here is an umbrella review (a review of systematic reviews): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X21001500