Social media is going the way of alcohol, gambling, and other social sins: Societies are deciding it’s no longer kid stuff. Lawmakers point to compulsive use, exposure to harmful content, and mounting concerns about adolescent mental health. So, many propose to set a minimum age, usually 13 or 16.
In cases when regulators demand real enforcement rather than symbolic rules, platforms run into a basic technical problem. The only way to prove that someone is old enough to use a site is to collect personal data about who they are. And the only way to prove that you checked is to keep the data indefinitely. Age-restriction laws push platforms toward intrusive verification systems that often directly conflict with modern data-privacy law.
This is the age-verification trap. Strong enforcement of age rules undermines data privacy.
↫ Waydell D. Carvalho
The answer to the dangers of social media is not to ban social media use among minors, for a whole variety of reasons. There’s data privacy, as the linked article goes into, but there’s also the fact that for a lot of people, including minors, who live in regressive, backwards environments and/or are victims of abuse, social media is their only support network. Cut them off from social media, and you cut them off from the very people who can save them from further abuse.
The problem isn’t social media in and of itself – it’s profit-seeking social media. Companies like Facebook and TikTok spend billions to hyper-optimise and hyper-target vulnerable people, much like how tobacco companies and drug dealers do, to feed and worsen their addiction because keeping people addicted is how they maximise profits. The solution to the dangers of corporate social media is to strictly regulate their behaviour, something we already do with countless dangerous products and services.
I’m obviously not qualified to come up with specific measures that would need to be taken, but I think we can all agree that whatever corporate social media have been and are doing is dangerous, unethical, should be stopped.
The answer to this problem is a digital wallet. However, for some reason I hardly read about it. Check this one: https://yivi.app/en/
I was waiting when this would be picked up, @Thom thanks for amplifying the concern.
All of this makes zero sense. We already have pretty solid parental controls on devices. Amazon (2012), Apple (somewhere in between), Google (2017) all offer one way or another for of locking down kids devices.
When a parent buys a device, they already have the options to guard their kids. The systems ask “are you setting this up for a child?” specifically. And they won’t let a child to set up by themselves in the first place.
And kids cannot install apps, add contacts, visit social media, or even use device outside of approved hours.
And why do we need IDs?
Because government wants to shoehorn legislation for more control.
That is it.
“For the children!”, “Don’t you think about security!” and all other nice sounding words are just crappy ways to take away our freedoms.
(Edit: Nintendo Switch and other gaming devices also have similar setups)
The problem is that neoliberalism went from social development tool to a fundamentalist religion. Fix that and everything else de-shittify.