Ban on Social Media for Under 18s

Brussels Sprout

Ban Facebook for the over 60s while you're at it.

Silentcorner

Imagine the amount of energy we'd save if we removed social media and broke our addictions to our phones!!

We'd see a fairly immediate improvement in mental health I'd imagine!

NiceFella

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119578987#Comment_119578987

Its not that parents would be the ones to circumvent a ban as this would more than likely be a pretty popular ban. Look at other commenters calling social media trash. As other above have said, people would be in favour (that's the easy part). However the hard part would be going up against multi billion dollar companies along with political corruption so getting a ban would be a tall ask.

Your second point is pure nonsense. So you'd continue with your "responsibility" even in the knowledge your child was being actively bullied over it? Do you have kids?

Jequ0n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119579044#Comment_119579044

You mentioned irresponsible parents who make it difficult for other ones to uphold any boundaries with their own kids. By this logic the same irresponsible parents would circumvent the ban to appease their offspring. The whole idea isn’t enforceable.

joseywhales

Same as every other period, the best you can do is model for your children. If you don't consume trash, they are less likely to. Obviously they will be curious and might do it anyway, influenced by friends but at least they will see that their family does not value that kind of thing. What else can you do really? They are autonomous and have to figure things out for themselves. You could ban sites on you wifi firewall but you won't control their phone network and there are ways to circumvent with VPN or other proxies. By trying to ban something you make it more exciting also.

NiceFella

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119579143#Comment_119579143

We might have very different views on how people generally think, but imo alot of bad/irresponsible parenting is just out of pure laziness. It's why bad parents "give in", because they don't want to deal with their childs complaints. If the matter was taken out of their hands completely by a ban it would take away responsibility. Parents like that aren't going to turn stones so their child can be on social media! And as well many of them know it's plain bad for their kids but see that there is very little they can do.

The responsible parent is left between a rock and hard place we're it becomes the lesser of two evils in choice. Allow them on social media like everyone else's child or allow them to feel isolated. Both are undesirable tbh but I'd feel awful if it isolated my child.

Ham_Sandwich

sure how would you ban things ridiculous thing to say let kids have something ffs

namloc1980

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058262165/ban-on-social-media-for-under-18s

So you want to give these corporates like TikTok access to you/your kids personal documents like passports etc. I can that going very well indeed.

kevthegaff

Listening to newstalk breakfast and they couldn't figure out what to do. Just ban mobile phones for under 16s, cost for parents for phone and phone plan. Simple as that but people say what can we do??

DoctorEdgeWild

In order for the social media companies to 'verify' your ID is authentic, they would have to have access to a list of all Passport holders in order to verify against.

This would be impossible. And crazy. And just generally a bad idea.

rob316

I didn't think for a second it was implementable or possible but I think most would be in agreement. Its just advertising, ridiculous levels of advertising you are exposed to, whether it is through direct ads or "influencers". In its original form facebook was great albeit annoying but the companies quickly realized ya can't make billions without ads.

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119578498#Comment_119578498

The age cut off here is 13.

People used to complain books were ruining the youth too. And dungeons and dragons. And video games. And Roblox. Now this.

As to ID verification -dead on arrival. How many people right now, of age, would give their ID to a site like boards? And would boards really want the expense and risks associated of managing that privileged data

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119579707#Comment_119579707

They could take a credit card payment and remove the vast majority of kids.

Arguing something is hard so we shouldn't bother seems a little lightweight.

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119579749#Comment_119579749

People already don’t do that for their porn. As someone else said this horse has bolted

DoctorEdgeWild

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119579749#Comment_119579749

Why would they, a private business who wants to make money, deliberately make their service more difficult to access to their customers? They have an age limit, I would suggest that those under 13 maybe shouldn't be accessing the internet without parental supervision? If that proves hard for parents to do, refer to your last sentence above (which I agree with).

El Gato De Negocios

Two words.

Parental

Control

Without that anything else is futile.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119580024#Comment_119580024

The argument was it wasn't technically possible.

Now its that it will hit profits. Guess we have to decide which is more important.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119580033#Comment_119580033

It's not possible for parents to control all of this. The infrastructure hasn't got robust parental controls. Often you need to access this infrastructure for education, sports and similar activities.

DoctorEdgeWild

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119580179#Comment_119580179

The question remains - Why would the social media companies want to limit their success? They have already set an age limit, the next bit is up to parents surely?

freshpopcorn

I grew up with social media. Well from about 12ish we had Bebo and then people moved onto Facebook.

I know it's developed and changed a lot since then.(I'm nearly 30).

However I did see some people trying to ban social media from there kids lives.

In my experience those were the people who were meeting strange men in their thirties they met on Facebook once they turned 18 at college.

Stephen_Maturin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119579481#Comment_119579481

No, prospective users over 18 would provide their documents. No kids documents.

As things stand these “corporates” as you call them have access to countless photographs of your kids, all of their private conversations as well as analytical profile on what they “like” etc - how the hell is that preferable?

Providing a document is fine for aviation websites, gambling websites, banking, revolut etc etc, what’s the big risk of Facebook having a picture of your passport as a consenting adult that’s choosing to use the service? They already have all of your details anyway, and much more too.

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119580275#Comment_119580275

It was already weird enough the schools tried to police what happened on Bebo, outside of school and school hours, in school during school hours.

BobDole22

First of all if you try and ban teenagers from something they'll just want to do it more it is upto parents to sit down and explain the dangers to their kids and encourage responsibility as much as possible. Second of all any ban now would be closing the door years after the horse has bolted.

DoctorEdgeWild

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119580281#Comment_119580281

How do they verify your passport? What database do they check it against? How do you suggest this would work using your example?

elperello

The horse isn't just out of the stable it's half way to the next county at this stage.

There was a young man on with Ryan Tubridy this morning who got his life in a mess with drink and drugs.

He told Ryan he started drinking at 11 years of age.

How can we stop them using social media if we can't stop them drinking and taking drugs?

Parental responsibility following on to personal responsibility is the key.

There is social pressure from their peers to be on social media, we might dismiss this but to them it’s everything. You need to get entire groups of friends to wean off it together to stand a chance.

Eoinbmw

Ive two teens and id prefer if they used less social media but feck off with your ban this country is turning into China!

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119580281#Comment_119580281

As things stand these “corporates” as you call them have access to countless photographs of your kids, all of their private conversations as well as analytical profile on what they “like” etc - how the hell is that preferable?

What is the purpose of bringing this argument up - giving them your ID as well is not an alternative to that.

skinny90

id support tighter regulation and more accountability from all major players in the space including google and apple and telecom companies.

If an event where to happen and as a result it can be proven that social media, a google or facebook or even telecom company was the cause without said companies doing anything proactive to prevent it then there should be a case opened and the company should face a similar ban to a GDPR breach.

We saw companies response to GDPR measures so its possible that regulation and consequence to breach of regulation would reduce alot of the impacts in how social media affects our youth.

At this moment in time, google/facebook and the likes can profile people pretty well based on their activity.

this would include people who like specific things, hobbies to even more in depth stuff like, whats going on in your life, if you are happy, sad etc ifyou are thinking negatively, talking to strangers, ill health, mental issues, it goes on etc

As a result there needs to be more proactive measures where Social media companies need to take more actions. whether its temp banning users for their safety or even having parent-child accounts where parents have full control / accessibility to their childs usage up until their 18.

Only then can a child opt out then when they are 18.

The telecom company could be the silver bullet.

As all devices have an IMEI, any device bought can only be purchased by an adult with ID and say proof of address.

When setting up the device it must be verified who the parent is etc.

With fintech companies and as of lately with c19 verifly, its a seemless yet highly efficient and effective process in terms of using your camera to verify all of the above

I know their may alot of semantics like proving who is the parent etc but its a thought and in my opinion itr should be explored as opposed to just simply banning

namloc1980

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119580281#Comment_119580281

Or maybe just maybe we try not to ban everything unpalatable in this country. The answer to anything difficult in this country is to ban it. Nonsense.