I am not a fan of a lot of laws, but I am a fan of rules. Not because I like people to be told what they can and can't do, but because they tend to focus energy and generate innovation. The old, rules are made to be broken expression isn't about pushing back on authority, but thinking better ways to do things than authority can. Which isn't that hard.
All games have rules, and life is just another game to play.
Like the rules in sport, they change over time, is players and teams looking to win will bend the rules, exploit loopholes, and improve in possibly unexpected ways that they weren't looking to invest effort into earlier. All to get an edge over the competition.
With normal governmental in competence and non-consideration of unintended consequences and complications, the Australian senate has passed a motion to ban children under 16 from social media by the end of 2025.
While the details are sketchy for implementation, this is a good thing in theory, though I don't think it should come from a government.
If a person is unable to consent to how they use their body, should they be able to consent to how their mind is used?
Kids shouldn't be on social media and have very limited screen time anyway. However, there is potentially a Darwinian factor involved. Buy into the mainstream culture of today, the average becomes less capable, less connected, less organized, and more compliant. The more people isolate from community, the more reliant they become on central authority to provide.
From what I have read so far, the age ban is cooked with a 50M fine for the social platform, but there is no punishment for parents or kids. As you might realize, this is going to cause some serious issues for the platforms if implemented, because they are going to need failsafe age checks, and nothing is that safe.
Maybe some blockchains are close.
This means that there will be all sorts of attempts to test how robust their age verifications are, and those don't really exist yet. More power to big brother, right?
Likely.
However, that power exists there already, just at no cost. Kids are being mined and scraped from birth for all of the information that can be gathered to better target and enslave them for life, by feeding them exactly what they want, but little of what they need.
Yet, what I am really interested in is how these rules are going to be circumvented, because they will be by both users and platforms. There will be a whole range of little cracks in the ruleset that could be exploited, and whenever there is some motivation to do so, or a high enough incentive, there will be attempts.
The thing with rules is that no matter how good the intention might be, there are always going to be a range of actors playing the game, and many will shortcut and cheat, or use other influencing factors to give them the edge over the competition. There are always going to be unintended consequences and unexpected behaviors that arise, and will need to be combatted, or nurtured as the case may be. Essentially, the defining of rules just sets the board, but once the players start experimenting, they are going to push the rules to the edge, and then over.
This is innovation and creativity at work.
Rules seem restrictive, but I think that in many cases, the opposite is true. Without rules, with "freedom of choice", the majority of people freeze, unable to make a decision on what to do. I would see this a lot at school in art class where people were at times told to draw or paint "whatever they want" and they were unable to get started on anything at all. Give an object and some guidelines, and their bandwidth was able to focus on painting between the lines, and then, exploring a little outside them too.
I don't think the government is going to be able to implement this law well, and I will not be surprised if by the time it is meant to roll out, the lobby groups have watered it down to near nothing, but there is movement. For almost two decades now I have been talking about the dangers of social media for culture and society, because our consumption affects the way we behave. At the time, not much heed was taken of my words, because the technology wasn't there to support it as much as it has been in the last ten years, but here we are.
Parents should be concerned with what information their kids consume, because it shapes the way they think and behave, in the same way that they should be mindful of what their children eat. It isn't about limiting screen time though, because that just sets up a forbidden fruit situation, with an even higher dopamine reward. Instead, perhaps we should be looking more at it from the perspective of value time.
What is the value of social media for children, in comparison to alternative activities?
These places aren't creating healthy social connections, they are setting up unhealthy comparisons and competitions. The few exceptions and the few values there might be, are well overweighed by the costs. And those values can be obtained in higher doses elsewhere. Social media doesn't bring anything to the table for a child, that they can't get in a better form from participating in another activity.
But, parents are taking the easy path, giving into the social pressure, because many of us are just as addicted, just as influenced, just as programmed - yet we think that we are making the decisions ourselves as an adult. But hey, apparently adults can't be trusted to make decisions on how they use their bodies either, otherwise there would be no thing as an imbalanced power dynamic in a sexual relationship in the workplace.
Rules should be there to try and protect the vulnerable, not to remove responsibility and learning opportunity so that the average becomes increasingly vulnerable. They should be there to give guidelines to what is expected to lead to good results for humans, not to be enforced to raise revenue for government or corporation.
The problem is of course, that centralized authority just can't help itself. It is destined to continually make decisions that apply to control the majority, while increasing powers for a minority. It is just the way they have to operate, because average is the best a centralized model can do, and there are always outliers who are smart enough, or ruthless enough, to exploit the average.
Banning never works.
Time and time again, this has been proven through many real-world trials. But, because people create rules based on theory, they keep on trying. It will be interesting to see where this leads.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
Your analysis of the relationship between rules and creativity is deeply thoughtful and timely. It made me think about how imposed limits can indeed serve as catalysts for innovation, by challenging people to find solutions within those frameworks. Your critique of Australia's recent ban on the use of social networking sites by under-16s is spot on; while the intention is to protect, the enforcement could prove problematic and generate unintended side effects.
The call for parental responsibility is crucial. In a world where social media can profoundly influence young people, the role of parents in supervision and guidance cannot be underestimated. In addition, your questioning of the true value of social media versus other more enriching activities is a point that deserves to be highlighted in public discussions. Picking up a book and browsing through it and finding in it the essence of the writer, just like the image of Smallsteps, I love it.
The observation about the tendency of authorities to apply rules that benefit the few instead of protecting the vulnerable is an important criticism. History has shown us that prohibitions and regulations that are certainly based on theories often fail in practice. It reminds us of the need for a balanced approach, where rules are designed and applied with a deep understanding of their possible consequences and with a broader vision of social welfare. The real problem comes from many years ago, when Roman law was at its height, just as the inquisition did what it did in the name of ‘a god’. It reminds me of a movie called ‘In the Name of the Lord’, very sad that such things have happened…
Unfortunately, I don't see many parents willing to take up the mantle of being a parent these days. At the supermarket tonight, I ran into a mother of a child my daughter goes to school with and we were talking about Christmas presents. I am making an advent calendar with small arts and crafts things, a ball of wool, some pencils - their kid is getting a playstation 5, because everyone else has one.
That was from tonight. We went to the local library for a trip :)
Most bans fail because they don't factor in the way we work as humans, which is, we don't like being told we can't do something. Ultimately, we will find ways to do it, even if we wouldn't have otherwise.
I wonder if we'll get an influx of Australian youngsters here on Hive ? Or how a centralised government could fine a decentralised platform where there's no CEO, no fiat bank accounts, and most exchanges don't hold many (or any) of the tokens ?
The thing to remember about Australia is that half the population are descended from convicts. The problem is that the other half are descended from prison wardens 😉
This is my question :)
And then, is it a social network, or something different?
:D
I don't like government getting involved in things like this. I believe it parents responsibility to watch out for their kids.
I agree - but have you looked at children these days? I am not a fan of government intervention, but it might wake some of the parents up.
I think that's a quite audacious law though the intentions are good. Implementation is going to be a serious problem. I see social media companies going to court because of this, seriously 50 million fine and none for the parents or kids? Ridiculous. We will just watch and see. If this policy works other countries might follow suit.
Why should there be? If a kid gets into a nightclub underage and drinks, the bar loses its license.
It will be like the tobacco laws though.
Social media can be harmful in children but I believe that it can be safe as long as parents do something called parenting. Even if children were banned on social media, internet can pose as much if not more harm to children unless parents provide the guidance that the children needs.
Most parents no longer parent, as they are too busy scrolling tiktok themselves
Today no one can keep children under 16 away from social media.
It is going to be interesting to see what happens when they try.
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Children get into trouble many times because of lack of parental involvement or boundaries. Perhaps it should be the parents who are limited in their screen time, so they may more thoroughly monitor their kids' online time. Kids suffer from lackluster parenting, because it is so much more fun to just swipe right. Government has no business in anybody's screentime...except for criminals and govt officials (same thing)
I know in the US they are talking about imposing some new rules as well. Over here they already have a rule that kids under 13 need parental permission to get on many of these platforms. As I was telling your brother in a comment on one of his posts, the problem is parents just don't care. They sign off on anything and they don't do any follow up to ensure that their kids are being safe and responsible. I think that's the real problem.
Is web2 social media healthy? No. Should kids be on Facebook and Twitter? Probably not, although as teen years progress, and depending on the kid, I can see it being useful to them in spite of the corporate algorithms and creepy panopticon effects. But governments are absolutely the least-qualified people to make decisions for what other people are "allowed" to do as free individuals.
I have always known that life is a game which one must play carefully according to rules that help in succeeding. Your own view here has added to the little I've known in the past. Thank you for sharing 😊🥰
I see this a bunch with the parents of the students I teach, who are stretched to the max trying to balance NYC's cost of living and for many of them acclimating to a new culture/society (many are from Ecuador). Social media is the bridge that allows them to entertain and care for their kids while they are engaged. What they are engaged in and what they are learning is up to the whims of the kids and I see the ridiculous choices they make with their time (skibidi toilet?!)
Typical government unable to keep up with technology. What's new?!
I'm extremely anti-this-law on principle because historically everything from COPPA and around it has not helped me in the slightest, in fact it actively hinders me from doing that part of my job. How the actual hell am I supposed to teach them to navigate safely online and apply critical thinking to online interactions when there's mounting levels of idiocy desperately trying to actively prevent all of that, like are they wilfully trying to make people stupider and more gullible while pretending they actually care about the children that apparently nobody ever thinks of.
I'll be quite happy when the chunks of the systems that I hate crash and burn, and will keep hoping that it's a slow decay to give those doing so that little bit more time to keep developing and bettering better systems/models and the rest of us to test them out/help iron out bugs/catch up even though spectacular and catastrophic would be more satisfying in the short term.