This sounds good on paper until you realize that what is considered "social media" is up to whoever happens to hold that position. Even ignoring the fact that it's unenforceable anyway, unless you require a real ID, wish is just straight up worse for all sorts of reasons.

The idea is nice, but actually putting it into law without opening the door to censorship and other side effects is just not plausible.

Edit: also, Everytime you read about a poll like this, ask yourself: what was the question they asked? Did it provide any context? Did it require any understanding of the actual underlying issues and laws? Or was it some variation of "think of the children"?

From what I understand of the Australian law, companies are prohibited from requiring a government-issued ID. In practical terms, how can this law be implemented, then? Bypassing a prompt that asks for a birthday is as easy as just lying. Other than requiring an ID, I honestly can't fathom a way this would actually work. I suppose you could require a active credit card number, but that would exclude adults and kids over 16.

As an Australian social media isn't the problem, like the internet isnt the problem, its commersialisation thats the problem. The need to grow the custoner base sees outrageous behaviours from corporations like Meta, Google, Apple etal but that's what they're incentivised to do, so that's what happens.

This legilisation won't solve shit. The government and the polotical class forcing citizens to use Facebook or Twitter to get information, they could start there.

Lets do it in the US too.

It's not like those republicans in government are gonna use this "kids addicted to social media" as an excuse to enforce ID verifications to go online, right? Think about the children!

Lots of people believe things not supported by science.

News at 11.

Urgh. This is a tough one. Social media has been a part of asymmetric warfare for at least the past ten years, and I don’t want my kids to be bombarded with propaganda from Russian and Chinese-funded far-right groups like the AfD.

At the same time, I understand how important it is for kids to explore the internet on their own.

If I had the choice, I would ban TikTok and Instagram.

But if that’s not possible – then honestly, ban everything. I will then work something out with my kids myself.

Those under 16 will definitely see this as patronising. In a way, they're right. Social media is bad for everybody—not just young people. It needs to be destroyed.

Ffs. Don’t copy us germany. The social media ban is not a good policy.

It seems that most in Germany do not understand they'll give even more of their online freedom away for no net gain.

Let's mandate state-sanctioned age verification. Some service may accept this, other won't. First loss. Then, some kids will get around that with complacent parents. Other will be pressured into it. In the end, it won't work as a full ban. So, either turn a blind eye to the whole situation (then why bother in the first place), or make it worse: only one account per ID maybe. Big second loss there. And even if it works, it's ignoring that some sites that would qualify as "social media" are the only communication outlet some people have. Third huge loss.

This will only be a terrible annoyance to everyone, prevent some services from growing or even exist, to the benefit of kids using their parents accounts anyway or VPNing around it. They learned how to do that very quickly for other online content.

Laws and rules that are unenforceable at scale are only useful to pin more faults on people when needed, not to help them.

An even higher percentage — 82% — were "absolutely certain" or "somewhat certain" that social media use is in some way bad for children and teenagers.

What's the percentage of those who are "absolutely certain" or "somewhat certain" that authoritarian adults wanting to control teenagers' lives out of a belief that the former know what's actually best for the latter is "in some way bad" for children and teenagers?

Whatever it is, it certainly includes me.

It makes me wonder if the result of this ban in Australia will see a rise in forums and chat rooms.

I'm just waiting until people realise that it won't work.

Libs will do anything but touch the corp :v

Banning social media is the easy cowardly thing to do. Are our representatives to afraid to regulate big tech?

Force these shitters to make their products healthier for all age groups. Yes it's hard. Grow the fuck up, put on your big boy underpants and do your fucking job.

Real question: how is anyone supposed to implement this without eliminating anonymity for those services?