this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2023
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Showerthoughts
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hot take but nobody under 18 should be allowed on any form of social media or internet forum
but there's no way to enforce that. better solution is to just get rid of all social media
Nah, send all under 18 to gulag. Make chip for computer. After gulag use chip to shitpost. Is circle of life.
"We'll wipe out everyone under 65." /s
As a kid myself, I should not be agreeing. I've seen so many young people destroy internet spaces or just make everything worse... I'm just glad I wasn't part of that as much as other people may have been.
Kinda with you on that. It's been a long time since I've been a kid (born in '85) but looking back, if the internet of the '90s were like it is today, I do not think it would have been OK for me to access it. Everything changed. It's a lot more dangerous than it ever used to be. There used to be a much more robust barrier between online and real life. Whatever happened on the internet never mattered until suddenly shit got as real as a heart attack. There was a time when the internet didn't have a body count. Isn't that fucking nuts? Once upon a time, death threats on the internet were nothing but empty words spat by impotent children who couldn't bring it about. NOW? You can get straight up fucking murdered by someone who gets mad enough on the internet because anger is a motivator and those with the motivation can doxx just about anyone, and it's a hair's breadth away from swatting them, or stalking them down and doing the deed with their bare hands.
I really don't want this to be like how the boomers climbed into prosperity and then pulled the ladder up behind them so hardly anyone else will ever have half a hope of ever affording a house ever again or something... but... the barriers to entry on cyberspace need to be reinforced. Badly. I'm no fan of all the rest of the fascistic shit in Ender's Game or the rest of its author's backward barbaric dogshit rhetoric, but one thing it might've gotten right was envisioning a version of a global communications network where only LICENSED ADULTS have access.
I don't think centralized control would go over well because that would be ripe for authoritarian abuse... but maybe some sort of pseudonymous situation where the identity you create online is supposed to be separate from your real self, albeit with a kind of reputation system for rules enforcement so if someone is engaging in socially deleterious behavior they can potentially be saddled with a ruined reputation as a deterrent. Maybe you can create a new identity, but you'd have to build your reputation from scratch, and if people can prove that you're associated with another extant account all its reputational baggage can get lumped onto your new one in an instant. The point being: to incentivize discretion and decorum.
I dunno. Just spitballing.
There is probably a way to age gate things well or whatever but I don't know.
You should see the Daniel Larson subreddit. Kids are legit psychopaths, doing illegal shit to a disabled kid.
It's pretty fucked. Ice tried reporting it, but Reddit don't give a fuck
I’m a parent, but I don’t have all the answers to this. But I will say that if you never let them use social media until they’re 18 and legally independent, then you never have the opportunity to teach them how to use it wisely and supervise their usage of it for a time. Just turning 18 doesn’t make you immune to its ill effects. I’m reminded of the really sheltered kids who landed in college and lost their minds on drugs and drink because they’d been so strictly forbidden for so long, and then all those controls were suddenly removed at once. That’s not always the best.
Not gonna lie, that take is boiling for a reason.
It has that typical vibe of an older person not able to relate to younger people anymore and their life situation, and just prohibiting stuff for them because they think they're smarter because of their age and only they can use it.
Also, prohibiting something for someone like this would have the opposite effect, basically everybody would just stay completely illiterate with it, fall into its traps once they can use it and make its bad effects even worse.
(Besides that, just look at the UK porn ban; everything that was terrible about it and made the whole situation much worse would also apply here.
In general: Don't just judge someone because of their age or act as if everyone with the same age would be the same.
Disagreed. But I would agree if you had said 13.
Social media is bad for your mental health and development, but it isn't as absurdly awful as Alcohol, and doesn't require the level of responsibility of Driving. Plus, there ARE positives to social media.
Blocking people off before 18 stunts people's ability to get into niche hobbies, of finding others with different world views and of being able to share niche creations. While some kids are prodigies as early as 7 year olds, the vast majority of people has the ability to be able to produce something of quality by 12 if they focus and try. Doesn't matter if most misuse and doomscroll, it's in their right.
I'm pretty sure twitter is soo bad cause all the teens, not some weird boomers who enjoy throwing shit at each other