While there is a real problem here, there are other good arguments against this solution - age verification systems are a personal data issues mess, a risk I especially wouldn't want to take with the personal data of minors.

I also suspect it will lead to a proliferation of equally damaging apps targeted so as to be excluded from the ban lists.

And there's also an extent to which it's a sticking plaster on a much wider societal problem of a lack of healthy digital systems.

a much better approach would be to co-design social media regulatory frameworks with youth representation- they have a much better idea of what’s needed, and the ban puts our most vulnerable (remote, immigrants, LGBTQIA, disabled) at even more risk.

I have thoughts on it here: rlok.notion.site/Australia-s-T…

But I’m definitely not an expert (and you should definitely listen to them over me). Unfortunately, the Aus government has chosen to ignore the experts

The AI workspace that works for you. | Notion

A tool that connects everyday work into one space. It gives you and your teams AI tools—search, writing, note-taking—inside an all-in-one, flexible workspace.

^Notion

A social media ban on children is an awful idea that is impossible to implement without dramatically reducing online safety for those same children.

You will never stop people finding ways to communicate, just drive them to less visible, less secure, and less safe ways of doing so.

Regulate the companies, not the users. Castigate billionaires, not teenagers.

@quixoticgeek the key argument is not that it’s unenforceable, or unworkable… it’s that *children (and adults) have a right to communicate*

Imagine it was the 80s and righteous campaigners said that children should be banned from using telephones because they might talk to *bad people*

This is not to let anyone off the hook in terms of safety - we have a duty to educate, to moderate, to regulate. Blanket bans and age gating is all about letting platforms avoid that.

Just to say, the harm is caused by the ‘media’ bit, not the ‘social’. Profit incentives and addictive algorithmic feeds prioritise retention of eyeballs over anything else.

Talking to others isn’t the principle issue, it’s the things around the conversation in the feed that are substantially the concern.

If children have to take the ‘social’ bit elsewhere they will. It then becomes much harder to know who they are talking to.

banning vpns is like banning maths. It's an implicit feature of all networking so the only way you can ban it is to turn all computers into a government controlled unmodifiable device managed by a mostly US megacorp.

If you want to crack down on social media and kids then ban processing of kids data like the EU. Ban advertising to children except human pre approved adverts, ban algorithmic feeds

And remember social media is crucial to disabled and to kids in isolated places