I’m asking for public policy ideas here. A lot of countries are enacting age verification now. But of course this is a privacy nightmare and is ripe for abuse. At the same time though, I also understand why people are concerned with how kids are using social media. These products are designed to be addictive and are known to cause body image issues and so forth. So what’s the middle ground? How can we protect kids from the harms of social media in a way that respects everyone’s privacy?
Parental controls have been an effective way for decades. In combination with actually looking over your kids, of course.
yeah, but that would require, you know, parenting, which is something we can’t do.
This is capitalism people. Hire a parent doula. Let them do the busywork of digital parenting like minding internet activity, scheduling playdates, managing ad blockers, paying the Roblox allowance, or whatever largely digital activity your kids are involved with.
Unfortunately a lot of parental controls aren’t that helpful, and they’re more of an afterthought
I agree with parenting in general though
The existing tools also extend poorly to cover adults with developmental disabilities who need a digital shepherd to make sure they’re using the web safely. There’s no substitute to being involved. Also, we should bring back the family computer. My parents had a computer in the public area of the house since I was in elementary school. Even in the age of laptops, we had a shared desktop.
By not allowing parents to outsource the responsibilities of being a parent.
I’ll reply to this random one with that statement. There’s no winning move as a parent.
Problem is being locked out. If your kid is the only one not on social media and all other kids are, your kid will be socially left out.
All kids are on a chat platform you don’t support. What do you? Disallow it and give them a social handicap that might scar them, or allow it and take the risk?
The same goes for allowing images on other platforms. Since GDPR schools seem to care. Yet if it’s a recording that will be put on social media you can explain your 4 year old why they weren’t allowed to participate… It sucks.
I don’t know what the right way forward is. I don’t think this is it. Something is needed though. We should at least signal what we find acceptable as a society. Bog stupid rules which are trivial to circumvent might be good enough, or perhaps some add campaigns like we did with smoking (hehe, if it’s for something we support then adds are good?).
Regardless, the current situation clearly doesn’t work. It would be great if we could find and promote the least invasive solutions.
I feel that communicating your concerns with other parents and their school can help. I feel it can make sense to have some forms of socialization when they are in middle school or high school, but even then you’d want a pretty locked down system, imo.
I feel that not every parent is going to let their kids use technologically to talk to their friends, especially not all the time. That’s not how I grew up and I was fine developmentally speaking. As a parent you can seek out other parents that live by similar philosophy locally for your kids to have as friends as well.
You’d be surprised with what parents let their kids do. My little anecdotal sample size contains mostly highly educated people but most of them don’t place any restrictions on screen time of their kids. They claim they talked to their kids and they have assured them they don’t look at anything they are not supposed to but that’s just not what happens in reality.
What really happens is that the kids with no restrictions will engage with all the predatory bullshit on these platforms, nonstop. I can see this with my own eyes and my kid brings their friends over.
Communication is key but unfortunately the business model of these platforms is based on addiction and children are not equiped to deal with it and parental controls are an essential component.
I believe the parent post is nicely sketching out what a “best” move is. I have seen no better approach myself. At the same time I see what you see. The best approach isn’t all that great. If you’re lucky and find the right people it could work. There’s a lot of luck involved there.
That’s why I do think there should be some regulations indicating what is tolerated. It seems to me parent poster may agree (and thus also woth your take).
Since GDPR you can tell the school you don’t want pictures on platforms you disagree with. You may miss out on seeing the photo’s, you might come across as crazy, but you can (and you should). We were given a choice at the cost of extra paperwork and some limitations.
Even without the addiction problem of these platforms we should nurture and find a good society around us. It’s a valid take to try and find likeminded people.
I don’t think that’s the end of it. Given the state we’re in, the network effect, and the fragile ego of developing kids, I suppose we need a stronger push.
AI enforced age verification or logins which allow you to be followed anywhere is not the solution in my current opinion, it’s a different problem. The problems are the addictive and steering nature of the platforms which seems to be hard to describe in a clear way legally.
I wonder how “these platforms” should be defined and what minimum set of limitations would give us and the children the necessary breathing space.
the minimum would be transparency for the algorithm. If users can see exactly what a social media algorithm is doing with their content feed, they would always have a way to identify and escape dark patterns of addiction.
But this minimum itself would require powers to compel tech companies to give up what they would describe as intellectual property. Which would probably require a digital bill of rights?
The most practical option would be to just ask your kids directly about the kinds of content they’ve been consuming and why. Dinner table conversations can probably reveal those dark patterns just as well
Wholeheartedly agree that the problem is the addictive and predatory nature of these platforms. I don’t see how that would change under the current perpetual growth economy we all live under
Well said
Kill the engagement algorithm. Your feed should contain a chronological list of posts made by people you subscribe to. In one stroke you could end the doomscroll - not just for kids, but for everybody. Also, infinite scrolling should be banned.
Your feed should contain a chronological list of posts made by people you subscribe to
Should that be the only way the feed should be organised by law?
in my opinion, yes. the point is to make it less addictive- and this will take away some of the ‘fun’ without isolating kids. social media is entertainment that has been branded and marketed as an essential by the people getting rich off it. i find plenty of good things on youtube without ever signing in - i just search for them. if youtube or whoever wants to use its own ad space to promote channels, i think that is probably ok - provided that the choice is not personalized by an algorithm.
How is this even remotely enforceable?
It will destroy curation. It’s an absurd concept.
I think it’s unrealistic also. I think a better solution is simply to ban endless scrolling. Require them to use pages is enforceable, and remove a proven addicting aspect to social media.
Stop. Giving. Them. Phones.
Stop whining. No they don’t need one. NO THEY DON’T.
No.
No they’re not special.
No they’re not too busy. Neither are you.
No iPad either.
Stop. Shut up. No. Phones.
That’s the tack I’m taking. My eldest goes to high school next year and most of his peers are automatically getting a smartphone at that point. He’ll be 13. He can forget it. A dumb phone at a push, for safety. That’s it.
I like “if you want a phone you can buy one”. If the kid’s up to getting and keeping a job long enough to save for a phone and service, good for them, they just proved they should be treated that much more like an adult. If not, then hey. Something to work towards
I had a dumbphone at 14, but back then we just called them phones and I was definitely in the 1% for having it. Wasn’t talking to my parents, bought it and a car to sleep in with drug money. Everyone grows up at a different pace
A dumb phone at a push, for safety.
I think that’s a good compromise.
I agree, if you limit “phones” to “smart phones and portable computers”. There are reasons to give a kid a small, no internet dumbphone. But yes, don’t give kids unrestricted access to the family PC, and DEFINITELY dont give them their own.
And or old school phones, that can call and text, but not surf the internet. Old smaller flip phones. Because parents will want to be able to communicate because they are worriers in many cases, there is no need for them to use smartphones for this.
Maybe its time for parents to parent their fucking kids…
There is no “harms of social media” per se. There are harms of unregulated companies that purposefully create addiction machines that are harmful to everyone, young and old alike. Our collective grandma became an antivaxer at the ripe age of 71, our collective dad became racist not at 13 either.
By getting rid of shitty corporate social media that makes money by exploiting people.
This is like suggesting that the solution to protecting your kids from tigers roaming the street is to lock them in their rooms. Nah, just rid of the fucking tigers.
As long as corporate social media is closed source, it would be hard to know if a no-advertising policy is being fully adhered to. A good example of this is the class action lawsuit against Chrome’s incognito mode: for years, Chrome got away with collecting personal browsing data when people browsed in incognito mode despite insisting that they didn’t do that. Something similar might happen with social media. To get around that, there could be a legal requirement for social media to be open source. That might run into issues with intellectual property law though, and the lobbying against it would be so intense that I’m not sure if a law like that would ever pass without massive political will.
Thats true for social media, but social media isn’t the only time you want to do age verification.
If you want to see porn or order (legal 😇) drugs for delivery.
And this is just times where the way to “protect kids” is age verification online. There are other times where you want to protect kids too, but doing so is invasive.
Sure, my answer is limited to social media because that is the question that is being asked here.
Ah, I suppose it is.
So I suppose I should direct my grievance at OP for being too narrowminded. There may not be a single solution for protecting the kids, but surely cast a wider net than this.
Also fwiw I think that the profit motive only makes an existing problem worse, it’s not the cause and therefore removing it isn’t the solution. It helps so we should still do it, but we have to be prepared that the job isn’t done.
exactly. im just spitballing but there should be a kid only Neocities website or something that is anonymous with pre-selected prompts you can send to other kids, no DMs or personal pictures allowed. kids and teenagers on instagram/tiktok is like kids of the early 1900s smoking a pack a day. and of course active parenting limiting how much time they spend online. as a kid in the 2000s, our bare bones sites was enough to let us feel involved with the world and still use the internet safely.
Yeah, don’t give them phones.
This is the solution in my home… Seems to work pretty well…
Past a certain age this may start to become socially isolating for the children
It’s true, at some point it becomes a necessity. I don’t know what to do about teens today, I haven’t gotten there yet.
There is not much in this world I care about less.
As a former teen that - due to other reasons - was socially pretty isolated, at this age acceptance from your peers is everything.
How many generations grew up without smart phones? Basically all of them. Why did it suddenly change that they are now “socially isolated” because they don’t have smart phones?
It’s actually proven that children and teens benefit from quality over quantity of their friendships. They don’t need to have surface level relationships with everyone they meet. They just need a few really good friends they interact with in real life.
I’m relatively young so I can attest to the fact that, even when I was in high-school, not having a phone would put you at a social disadvantage. Thats how kids kept in touch out of school hours and coordinated social events. It’s not ideal but thats how things work now.
I’m also young. I had smart phones ans social media in highschool. The “disadvantage” no longer exists if parents make a coordonated effort to get their kids off smart phones. You don’t need everyone, just a large enough group. I highly recommend The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
I agree that if you can get enough parents onboard with the no cell phone rule then it’s not a problem. But there’s a bit of a coordination problem there so that might not be achievable in all circumstances
@Bazoogle @ageedizzle I’m ok with my kid interacting with his friends on his phone, I’m not ok with mindlessly watching YouTube or playing pay-to-play mobile games
So, he just needs a cell phone? Seems like they don’t need a smart phone. Regular cell phones are still an option
i.e. a “dumb phone”
Regulate advertising space and personalization algorithms.
Yes, it will kill a large portion of current economy, so maybe do it slowly. But generally speaking you should be able to find what you want on the internet, not what advertisers want you to see.
This is it. We regulate drugs, so likewise the addictive algorithm needs regulation, but no lawmakers want to go after the oligarchs.
It’s a vaguely similar situation to immigration. If the US really wanted to stop illegal immigration they could take care of the vast majority of it immediately with harsh penalties for any employer caught with illegal employees, but no one wants to actually keep immigrants out because that would be admitting to the fact that they’re crucial to the economy.
Best solution IMO: Don’t let them use social media. If they really need to communicate, just buy them a SIM and or let them use your phone and SIM to contact them directly.
And if you must let them use social media, set up parental controls on your router. I suggest NextDNS for this. And basically, monitor everything your child watches or interacts and engages with. If they’re using YouTube, check their accounts to see what content they’re consuming.
Kids these days have access to the internet way too early. When I wanted to use the internet up until 14 I could either go buy my own computer (with what job lol) or I could use the family computer in the living room. Now 11 year olds are shit posting to 18+ subreddits it’s disgusting. And it’s all the parents fault. No govt regulation will fix this, you have to discipline your kids!
They should revive the “Family Computer” thing in families once again. Way better than handing them their own devices
They *will* get around it. It’s better to actually talk to them
The answer is that we shouldn’t have most social media to begin with and parents need to actually fucking parent their kid’s usage. Social media is just the television replacement.
It is by nature very different from television. Television is purely entertainment, and is one sided. It’s also only available when you are at home in front of a TV.
Social media is two way, you engage with it directly. You are now comparing yourself to the perceived lives of those around you. For most adults, this is fine. It had proven to have a very negative impact on developing children/teens, especially young girls. Not to mention it is now always with you, always in your pocket. You have access to it 24/7, which is nothing like TV.
TV has been around for a century and has not shown massive negative consequences on mental health. Social media and smart phones has been around for ~15 years and has ruined a generation. It is definitely not just the television replacement
I meant by the television as it’s used to distract/occupy kids so the parents can just not parent. Not that it’s got the same issues as television, it’s just the replacement for keeping kids distracted so people can just not be parents to their crotch spawn.
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Of course there is a role for parents to play here, but I worry that making this the sole responsibility of parents allows big tech to evade responsibility. Vendors are not allowed to sell things to children that we can reasonably foresee will cause them harm, like alcohol or cigarettes. Why should social media be any different?
The German passport allows services to verify age through you NFC reading your passport on your phone and confirmation of validity through intermediates state service. All they see is a confirmation of age requirement met. No name, no age, no address, no face.
Some other countries have similar systems. It’s already a EU directive to be implemented on a broader European level.
This sounds like a much better strategy than the Australian model of simply scanning your face and using AI to guess your age
How would that work online? How would they confirm it’s your passport, and that it’s a real passport that was really scanned (instead of a browser plugin)?
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EIDAS
- https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personalausweis_(Deutschland)#eID-Funktion
- Register as a service, with justification why you need to be able to read the fields or properties you say you need
- Upon acceptance, aquire a digital permission certificate
- Set up a server, that handles communication with the ID
- For a request, prove you own the permission cert through a challenge sent by the ID document
- ID document proves through a challenge to the server that it is what it is (a set of produced ID documents use the same private and public keys so they are not personally identifiable / associatable to an individual)
- User enters PIN so that this process can proceed
- Open secured connection between server and ID document
- Server can request/challenge age verification, and the ID document answers with “is met”
At least the Wikipedia page is not detailed/technical on step 8, but if you were to attempt to man-in-the-middle, you could not because you can’t fake identifying as a valid ID document, which is ensured by the challenge and private/public key cryptography.
I’ll need to look into it a bit more, but I’m skeptical that this will work in practice:
How can they confirm that I’m the owner of the passport? How do you prevent them from selling the fields they requested, that have been uniquely linked to you? How do you prevent the government from keeping track of all the services you’re using?
The first factor is you physical passport, the second factor is your pin.
I don’t see how an age verification could prevent selling verified age. Once they acquire data they could theoretically sell it, illegally, if they ignore law.
The point is, you can share a small subset of fields without others. No need to share your face or passport number.
I’m not sure about whether the authority knows about the request and response at all. I previously thought so, but this description did not mention it, and it doesn’t seem technically required, if both sides can verify public key/cert validity independently, and then communicate with each other.
I have no answers at this time, but THIS IS THE CORRECT QUESTION
Maybe sidestep this by asking more questions.
Why do kids use social media? What do they get from it? What could it be replaced by that’s positive? What is social media?
That sort of thing.
I like to think I’m a tech savvy parent and the amount of tooth gnashing to setup and maintain child accounts is incredible. I’m convinced the foxes guarding the henhouse are using dark patterns to make parents give up.
Why can’t I just get a notification on my phone saying “Hey, kiddo wants to have screen time. Approve?”
Hell, I’d love a notification saying “Kiddo started watching Mr. Blah.” If I got the notification and I didn’t want them watching that, I could block the video, or creator with a click. WHY ARE WE NOT AT THIS LEVEL OF CONVENIENCE?
A LOT of these concerns would go away if phones/tablets/tv’s had these simple controls. Move those privacy controls into the home and MAKE them so easy a neanderthal could operate them.
If I have to *.newsocialbook.com into my router, you can bet your damn ass that “LiveLaughLoveMom<3” is going to keep demanding that someone else do it for her.
Sounds like an opportunity to create something like that. Any devs around here up for it?
Capitalism. Everything you described costs money to create and maintain and it generates zero (or negative) profit. Most people aren’t going to want to pay for some sort of nanny toolkit.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree with you and it should be like that. Our current systems are not going to bring that about though.
