Yes that's exactly what the people want, online censorship!

Online censorship* for children below age 16 yes.

Children are incredibly vulnerable online and are often exposed to dangerous content that can cause harm. Examples include bullying, pedophilia, radical right wing/Islamic rhetoric.

I fully agree that we should not allow kids below age 16 on public social media platforms. WhatsApp or something okay, but looking back at my time as a teen, many of my girlfriends were definitely in dangerous situations because of their online presence. Grown ass men hitting on them and eventually meeting with them / taking advantage. Its a serious thing.

Children under 16 should be careful with social media but I don't think they should be banned from it. I think it's the devices itself, or at least the use of iPads and smartphones from toddler age.

Presenting this genuinely great idea as a bad thing is sending me

It is the damn phones. Children are especially vulnerable to all the terrible things online from alt-right pipelines to grooming to insane conspiracies to all kinds of mis and disinformation. I'd be fine with social media going away entirely. Definitely a net negative for the world. But it should certainly be taken away from people with developing minds. We'll look back on many aspects of the internet like cigarettes except maybe worse because we allowed literal children to take part.

Edited June 29Jun 29 by DevilsRollTheDice

They should ban access to AI services too, the 0 critical thinking if they spend all their time asking Chatgpt etc for the answers to anything

Random flashback to when I was supposed to meet up with a man in a different state at age 13 on GayTeenForums .net

Children and teenagers should not have access to social media, and frankly, the internet, unless under strict and controlled circumstances such as in school for education purposes

otherwise they should be offline, outside, enjoying themselves and being kids

2 minutes ago, SmittenCake said:

Random flashback to when I was supposed to meet up with a man in a different state at age 13 on GayTeenForums .net

I forgot about that website. I had an account there too

Genuinely terrible idea that will affect everyone, and that isn't at all about children Be ready to lose all anonimity on the internet

Some of you are extremely quick to cheer for a terrible idea.

Online spaces are harmful af, yes, but they can also be very helpful to minorities to form safe communities. There have been enough indications that LGBTQ+ (especially T) people who live away from urban areas can find escape routes on fringes of social media.

Censorship always mathermatically leads to escalation of violence and hate speech.

Please stop blindly supporting Democrats; their only proposal is that they're not GOP.

Edited June 29Jun 29 by Démodé

This was always a great idea on paper until we saw how disastrous it actually is when companies who don't have the infrastructure to properly implement these safeguards just end up blocking access altogether which hurts everyone (see: UK). Parents need to be more active in their child's lives and set proper ground rules for internet access, the government doesn't need to do that for them.

I work with kids as young as eleven years old, and it's really concerning the type of social media they can access. I thought it was bad when I was their age but somehow it's even worse now. I always hear Discord notifications going off on their phones, and I've even overheard them sometimes talking about NSFW subreddits.

I am curious how they will be able to enforce this and how they will deal with the pushback not just from the children themselves but from the tech companies who rely on children consuming their content.

Lots of yall are missing that the way they will ensure children don't have internet access is by making you upload a government ID when you log in to Twitter/Youtube etc. Hell, they'd probably even make you upload it when you set up a new OS!

The concept of keeping children offline is overall positive IMO, but how would this be implemented? Adults uploading sensitive, identifying information and banning access for everyone else? I don't think that's a good idea. What else could they do?

Is implementing parental controls & spreading awareness about their existence (that many parents aren't even aware of or have difficulty accessing) really that hard that they have to resort to this

Edited June 29Jun 29 by Billionaire

I can see why aspects of this are genuinely desirable, and certainly curbing the impact of social media on young minds and lives is important - but I do wonder if focusing on this kind of thing as critical pieces of the policy platform is as advisable as being more honest about other everyday challenges like rent, housing, healthcare, wages, groceries. I hope this maybe is a component of a much more comprehensive platform that is genuinely progressive rather than being a keystone issue that takes center stage over those things.

I also think we need to be very cautious about bad faith initiatives intending to erode privacy rights masquerading as "think of the kids!" things. This isn't new - every couple years a new version is championed by a bipartisan effort until privacy advocates and other groups expose how radical some of the provisions are. Do we trust Democrats not to do it all over again? Are we smart enough not to just say "well I have nothing to hide, so it's fine with me" and **** ourselves over, hurt our own ability to stay safe and anonymous under the next overtly hostile Republican administration? The current administration has already proven it will literally lie about these exact topics to justify unwarranted visa cancellation and deportation.

Knowing Democrats, I expect this to go horribly wrong anyway.

I'm sorry but I AGREE! As an underage kid and teen I was watching and doign stuff I should not have been. Even calling other popstars fugly whores to defend Queen Rihanna.

And TikTok lives have become so sexualized..... the countdowns for TEENS to turn 18... it's disgusting.

I have to say, it is a bit rich seeing people who advocate for single party government and massive government control on nearly every aspect of life wring their hands and clutch their pearls over this. Sometimes, as you all very well know about endless other issues, government intervention is a good thing. We cannot expect people to curb terrible addictive behavior on their own. Parents are not stepping up. Governments have stepped in to regulate many things that negatively impact public health and phone and social media access for children and teenagers is a public health crisis.

Edited June 29Jun 29 by DevilsRollTheDice

Well why not just go ahead and revoke public parks and coffee shops too? Let parents be parents and make the decisions for children themselves.

I don't know if this is the best course of action , I guess we'll see since parts of Europe are slowly implementing these social media bans for people under a certain age .. having said that , I don't think it should be completely written off as unviable. What's the biggest counter argument ?? That parents need to step up and do a better job parenting ?? Bc if the last 20 years of living in this world is any proof: that's simply not f*cking happening. I get how drastic of a measure this is on its face , but maybe there are parts of this idea that are actually worth implementing. Bc at least as far as I think anyway, the new generation of parents are completely dropping the f*cking ball and outsourcing a lot of their responsibility in raising their children to screens and computers.

8 minutes ago, DevilsRollTheDice said:

Sometimes, as you all very well know about endless other issues, government intervention is a good thing. We cannot expect people to curb terrible addictive behavior on their own. Governments have stepped in to regulate many things that negatively impact public health and phone and social media access for children and teenagers is a public health crisis.

Are you trolling?

I needed to remind myself that social media bans led Nepal's parliament to burn beautifully, so maybe it's not a bad idea!

Final thoughts:

1.) The furthest left governments in the world, like China, implement major internet censorship for minors (and everyone else). Not sure how you can argue against this type of policy from a far-left standpoint which is what many ATRLers will attempt to do. Censorship has been a main feature of every far-left government this century.

2.) I personally disagree with censorship and I do think it leads to worse problems. But this isn't censorship. We're talking about minors. We "censor" children from all kinds of things that aren't developmentally appropriate. The internet and social media is not developmentally appropriate for children. That is becoming more and more apparent with each passing year.

Policies like these are good.

Studies that show a significant effect of social media on youth mental health only show a very limited effect size. You know what has the biggest effect size? Socioeconomic position. But I guess it is easier to focus on government surveillance than actul things that empower people.

1 minute ago, jesus del rey said:

Studies that show a significant effect of social media on youth mental health only show a very limited effect size. You know what has the biggest effect size? Socioeconomic position. But I guess it is easier to focus on government surveillance than actul things that empower people.

wake up and clock that tea!