As a parent, I completely agree. We need to protect children from the dangers of the completely uncontrolled "jungle" of social media. But above all, we need to give children back the right to experience a true, real childhood, made up of true friends, fresh air, friendships, and real relationships!
Reminds me of the prohibition era.
What's stopping you from doing this so far? Handing a child a smartphone is a decision parents can make, withholding access to a smartphone is also a decision parents can make.
Might start taking effect in spring 2027
Both of these things can be true. We need to figure out how to navigate this new reality and no action was getting really dangerous.
After all, the government wants to watch everyone, to verify your age now. Gone are the days of anonymity - they want to know your every move.
> Google Wants to Be the ID Checkpoint for Europe’s Internet
https://reclaimthenet.org/google-wants-to-be-the-id-checkpoi...
In many of the previous riot/anti-immigrant violence cases, those arrested have substantial criminal records, which tends to lead to the "why is this person not in prison already?" discourse.
(look at how long the court system queues are some time. It can be years from offence to conviction!)
Hmm I guess those kids would use their parents account or something like that.
But nowadays as a parent I see, instagram, tiktok are much more scarier for the damage they make psychologically and mentally to our kids. And with the AI slop it's only going to go downhill. So yes, it's a great decision, and other countries should follow the lead.
BTW, it's worth noting that, in the UK, parents are legally allowed to give their children alcohol, at home, from the age of 5.
Please correct me if any of the above is a misunderstanding.
If the above are representative, then what I believe you've overlooked here is a the much more difficult issue:
Parents have power over children, at least up to a point, and many platforms provide help with exercising that power. Apple and Google provide some means to restrict social media access which place control in the hands of parents.
Parents do not, normally, have power over other people's children. Parents can influence in-person social circles, somewhat, but without withdrawing children from all situations where they interact with other children, including school, social media's influence upon a parent's children is still very strong via the indirect route.
When a child goes to school, attends a group activity outside of school, or socialises in real life with friends outside of school, there are always children in the groups they meet who either use social media themselves or have older siblings, friends or parents who use social media themselves and who influence those children themselves.
To be clear, I'm not giving any opinion about what's proposed here by the UK government. I wanted only to object to what looks like an oversimplification that makes a false assumption that parents have a level of control and influence that they really don't.
Banks keeps sending me warnings about some new ‘Nigerian prince’ level scams. They wouldn’t be doing it if grownups weren’t falling for them.
General population doesn’t want to setup piholes.
Kids have less freedom than ever.
anotherhue•1h ago
dryarzeg•1h ago
Oh yeah, and what about BlueSky, Mastodon and similar? Can they afford age verification? I'm pretty much sure they will be considered "a social media platforms" as well.
oneeyedpigeon•1h ago
dryarzeg•52m ago
n4r9•49m ago
pjc50•40m ago
Fewer voter from young people, though. The proposed curfew is even more stupid: https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/how-uk-social-media-ban-wo...
Which would mean that a sixteen year old would be able to stand in a polling station and vote at 9pm but not then go on Tiktok once they'd left.
(yes, the same government which doesn't trust children with social media has also lowered the voting age. No, this makes no sense. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/representation-of... )
dryarzeg•33m ago
One common route that comes to my mind is this: block [something-dangerous] for children, then implement age verification for [something-dangerous], then use it as a tool of censorship. It's way easier to identify and track individuals based on their passport/ID/driving license than based on their email, IP address or even phone number. And then you're getting jailed for posts somewhere on BlueSky or X or on any other social platform because they were hate speech/disinformation/discrediting the armed forces (the last one is the real thing in Russia, and I just see the UK as the country which goes the same path) - while actually you was just criticizing the actions of people in power.
And you can also legally ban and block platforms, services and even software which doesn't satisfy the requirements of age verification.
That's how I see it; that is, I repeat, my assumptions and thoughts. I have never, never in my lifetime (which is rather short though) seen such proposals turn out to be good.
philipwhiuk•1h ago
s08148692•1h ago
There are options that don't involve forcing everybody to prove their age and provide ID verification to access social media
hugh-avherald•58m ago
shevy-java•58m ago
Indeed. Assuming this is the real goal. That would require of people to trust the government. I in general trust no government.
wallaBBB•57m ago
oneeyedpigeon•1h ago
Another 'better option' would be to prosecute tech companies that intentionally create addictive, harmful content.
Banning social media use for anyone unwilling to hand over their secure information to private third-parties seems like one of the 'worst options' to me.
9dev•45m ago
Oh yeah, punishing children for mistakes they need to make to learn not to make them and moving responsibility from parents to the government sounds like a great idea.
pjc50•37m ago
(There's a bottom 5% of kids whose parents are basically completely negligent or actively abusive, and they end up causing basically all of the problems)
oneeyedpigeon•34m ago
pjc50•59m ago
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/belfast-riot...
Targeting kids is a distraction from making the difficult choice of confronting powerful adults.
majorchord•51m ago
I'm certainly not defending the man, but that comment to me is definitely not plainly seen as "advocating riots"... I'd call that a very disingenuous stretch of the truth.
If we're going to criticize people, I think we need to do it for the right reasons.
pjc50•43m ago
For what outcome though, hmm?
The exact opposite logic gets applied against supporters of Palestine such as Sally Rooney, who was threatened with a total ban on her (unrelated) work until the High Court ruled in her favor.
m000•8m ago
Also, including the mid-teens (15-16) into the regulation may have a generational negative effect. This is the age you start to get interested in the world and how it works. Social Media is the primary medium teens use to get this information, having eclipsed traditional media (magazines, tv shows, radio shows etc.) Banning Social Media for these ages leaves a gap in newer generations maturing to adults.
But maybe that's by design? I.e. make new generations indifferent to the world around them, and also prevent them from building resistance to (home) propaganda spread through Social Media.