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Malaysia enforces ban on social media accounts for children younger than 16

https://apnews.com/article/malaysia-social-media-ban-16-bfaa7b01163b61b5d53c4ecfa870d133
41•01-_-•54m ago

Comments

infinite_spin•27m ago
Out of curiosity, how difficult (from reasonably expensive to impossibly expensive) would it be to build a second internet for children, completely disconnected from what we'd call the adult internet?

If we're going toward this highly curated model, which I'm not against, I'm wondering if this would be a reasonable solution to preventing the exploitation of minors on the internet.

energy123•24m ago
It might be a good business (like youtube for kids) but would it actually be good for kids? They should go outside with their friends, and people in the tech industry should stay away from them. Allegedly good intentions ("help you stay in touch with your friends") will eventually turn into what it always turns into.
ulrikrasmussen•3m ago
Nothing is universally good for kids in too big quantities, but I think this approach would be less bad than any other approach to the moral panic around social media.

I would never let my kids access YouTube Kids, and I probably also wouldn't let them loose unsupervised on a kids-only internet either, but I would much prefer it to the alternative whack-a-mole approach of trying to make the actual internet a kids friendly place, which will eventually destroy online anonymity and turn a few of the biggest tech companies into de facto gatekeepers for everyone and handing them a regulatory moat the size of the Atlantic.

rTX5CMRXIfFG•18m ago
I shudder at the mere thought of opening this can of worms, but… have you looked into web3?
a-french-anon•15m ago
Prepare for Lords of the Flies: Digital Edition , I'd say.
kinmick•26m ago
Great news, hope many more countries follow suit.

Like banning the sale of nicotine products to under-16s, it won't be a perfect solution as a few will continue to work around the restriction, but it's a huge step in the right direction.

reddalo•11m ago
I like this. I'm just worried that it's going to make it way harder to create new independent small websites, if the webmasters have to check their users' age.
golph•23m ago
I’m on the fence regarding bans like this.

But from first hand, I grew up on social media and I can’t say it was really positive for me or the people around me that also grew up on/with social media.

I’m wondering how this would change mental health in young people. Can anyone point me to specific studies on this?

hhjj•10m ago
The real subject is what it implies: identification of every Malaysian posting on social media to enforce this ban.

Control of speech through think of the children rhetoric.

Forgeties79•10m ago
I’ve given this a lot of thought as well and I’m also generally a little unsure, especially because the Internet was so positive for me in most other ways (it’s hard to overstate what battle.net communities did for my psychology and confidence as somebody who felt kind of alone) but I think what ultimately distinguishes the current harm of social media is that what we had back then was not nearly as sophisticated. Yes I’m sure they were getting some data from us, yes there was exploitation and problems, But the current infrastructure of the “attention economy” is absolutely insane and beyond destructive.

From a social perspective, it wasn’t really until Instagram blew up in popularity and we had to start learning not to take people’s feeds as representative of how great their lives were that this stuff started to creep up. IMO Facebook was a little more text driven and myspace was mostly just middle school drama that would’ve taken place IRL anyway.

test1984•6m ago
The Anxious Generation is a recent book that extensively explains the damage caused by social media before age 16. The arguments in the book would support such a ban if it manages to get the majority of kids off social media, but it has to be a critical mass and not easily evadable
arjie•5m ago
Ah, it requires at least 8 million users[0] in Malaysia and they have a list. I was wondering how Hacker News etc. were going to comply.

0: https://soyacincau.com/2025/12/15/mcmc-social-media-instant-...

noobermin•4m ago
This is likely because the government fears of protests. Just like the bans in the west were mostly about anti Israel/ pro Palestinian rhetoric, this is a response to the anti Government protests last year in Indonesia and elsewhere. They're afraid of it happening there.

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