Now, this is not a surprise to me that they can actually do it, because I never believed the nonsense when they said: “Oh, it's impossible to age verify, we couldn't possibly.” Because guess what? They can.
Reddit over in the UK does this - it age verifies and stops people seeing content. It's completely possible to do. And it's pretty obvious that they already have a rough idea of how old the kids are, because that's why they feed teenage content to teenage people.
What I think we should take from this, though, is that we should never believe the social media companies when they say they can't stop kids using their products.
What I think you should do is kind of take the approach of treating them a little bit like the tobacco companies of old - completely untrustworthy, want to peddle their product, do not want to stop peddling their product.
In fact, I think, to be honest, that there is a useful parallel here with the way that we treat ciggies and how we should be treating social media companies.
We ban kids under the age of 18 from buying ciggies, we ban them from buying booze because we know it's bad for them.
When they're older, they can use it. Hopefully, they use it wisely, but not when their little brains and their little bodies are still developing. And I think the same is true of social media.
And yes, like the ciggies and the booze, the kids are gonna find a way to get around it and get their hands on it. On a New Year's Eve when they're 16, they're gonna get completely drunk. But hopefully it'll be a rare occasion, not an every weekend type of thing.
And in the case of banning the booze and the ciggies, we could have left that up to the parents. We could have said: “Nah, it's okay, you decide if your kids want to smoke and drink under the age of 18.”
And parents should play a role, right? But I think we all decided as a group that this was worth banning, and I think we need to do the same thing with social media.
And I think we need to do it mainly for the social media companies, because they are not prepared to do it themselves until they're forced to - just like in Australia.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show HERE - where this article was sourced.
6 comments:
Parents should "play a role"?
Like... a starring role or more like a cameo role or bit part?
Because the way things have been going for a while now, it seems like Nanny State wants to be in charge of our kids. You know, that same Nanny State who said it was wrong to give your child a little smack because some people abused their children to death... and look how well that has worked...
You know, that same Nanny State who thinks drag queens reading stories to tots is a great idea, rather than sending to an old folks' home where they'd be more appreciated...
You know, that same Nanny State who thinks it is possible to 'change your child's gender' and wants sex education from kindergarten.
I think it would be more productive to get rid of porn from the internet and leave the social media to parents.
But that would require a Nanny State who actually cares about the children.
So now, having 'a rough idea' of how old someone is will be close enough for banning someone? That has to be one of the dumber ideas this year.
No to digital ID. Just ban the social media companies from doing business altogether. They don’t contribute anything useful to society.
Completely disagree with any sort of ban. It is just the trojan horse for compulsory digital ID for everyone and everything. I've never been on a protest, but I would over this issue.
Banning something NEVER works.
How many times do I read about the same old stupid idea.
Especially when this hairbrained scheme can't actually define what the issue is they want to ban.
Teens using social media and buying things online?
Noone cares so long as the credit card details are entered correctly.
We need to stop trying to play mummy and daddy and put the responsibility on parents and parenting.
This is not the government's job to police. It is the job of parents to decide what their kids have access to.
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