I can appreciate the argument that’s being made to counter this. That enacting such rulings would drive the affected children to lesser known pockets of the internet. However I think that’s a red herring by the industry, since that always happens anyway.

A new platform pops up and people go try it. It’s only a matter of time before there’s a new Tiktok in town. They will spin up and die off faster than legislation can keep up. Seems to me the industry wants to keep the children for the data, and the revenue that comes with it.

Something does need to be done though. Our minds are becoming mushy tomatoes and social media is partly to blame. A better solution might be education of course, but I’m not sure what that would look like, or if it would be effective unless integrated into curriculums quite early on.

Just force the websites to have hour limitations, so they can only be used an hour a day.

… don’t force a whole country into an ID system.

Blame the billionaires making the stuff, not the addicts.

The UK’s minimum age for social media is 13, and has been for over a decade now. I’ll leave it to the reader to figure out if children are able to circumvent this airtight legal framework.

While I agree that it’s a good idea, I have no idea how they’re going to be able to implement its successfully. You already have to click the “yes I’m over 13” checkbox on these stupid things and there’s no verification system that you are, in fact, over 13. Hell they d o the same thing on porn sites, “I verify that I’m over 18.” It’s not like somebody is going to check, it’s just a way to deflect the blame from the website if the kid gets caught by anybody.

I thought it was just one State in Australia discussing it?