Today social media is more like a drug, to keep the user engaged and to push content to them. The content must either be addictive/engaging or paid advertisements. Quality of the content doesn't matter at all. Connecting people to do stuff outside of the virtual world would actually hurt their business model. People turn off their devices and go outside, instead of watching ads.

So it's probably fine to just block the big platforms. Forums or messengers (without ads and public channels) are probably fine. Probably even Reddit - which does have an algorithm to show specific content - is not as bad.

Some say it was a technical failure during migration when the company was trying to pivot to file hosting, but it's impossible to verify.

Perhaps these bans are a blessing in disguise and future generations will be happy to not have their most awkward stage of life available forever, to everyone, in detail.

Instead this should be attacked from the profit side, by banning any form of advertising which might target children. If there's no profit to be made in servicing said demographic and a law requesting at least end user 'agreement' that they are an adult, this should be sufficient.

Kid's have unlimited time. They'll find something else, likely pretending to be adults and thus even more at risk.

Meanwhile everyone else gets an internet license and the government every website tracks you ...

This is a classic case of nice idea and the results will be all wrong / not even address the problem.

> Finland looks to end "uncontrolled human experiment" with Australia-style ban on social media

Let's not forget that social media are just one of the many scapegoats tried over the past decade in hopes of pushing this idea forwards. And while there's no denying that today's social media have gotten destructive, they're still only a scapegoat; no attempt is being made here to bring them back to their original, non-malicious shape.

Is the social media hate really so powerful that, channeled carefully, it can overshadow free speech?

I.m sure there'll be downsides to this but, have to say, I'm happy the de facto position that social media's should be allowed to be the wild west is now seriously being questioned

I think most people are better off, and have a more nuanced view of reality if the only news they get is local. Or the updates from people they know always in person.

The dangers of algorithmic content are so obvious, and the only way to stop companies from doing this stuff is to legislate against it

My ex and I have an agreement in our separation agreement that our children can’t have social media until they’re 16. This is the version of it I’d want for them, if they choose(or feel pressured) to use it

Speaking personally, I'd be much happier with it if they rolled out some zero knowledge proof of age infrastructure so the platforms could verify ages without all the PPI age identification currently requires flying around. It would remove a major criticism - government monitoring of consenting adults. Even if that aspect doesn't concern you in Australia had numerous leaks of identify documents in the past few years. Both my wife and I have had to replace our drivers licences due to leaks.

At this point I do not think it is reasonable to deny the harm that certain modes of social interactions over the internet have caused. At the same time these bans should not be considered reasonable options. They exist to cover for the decade of inaction of politicians in addressing youth dissatisfaction and dysfunction.

A reasonable approach should not assume that the root cause of this dysfunction is youth interacting with social media, but should consider what lead to this in the first place. Apparently most adults seem to be capable of dealing with this situation, if they are not why would this ban, or at least some regulation, not extend to social media for adults.

In general I believe that dysfunction in the youth has multiple causes and that overuse of social media is just on part of the puzzle and that unhealthy use of social media is often caused by other problem and used as a coping mechanism.

These bans will not be effective and they will be assaults on the free internet, as the bureaucrats establishing the laws are also seeking to control the internet for themselves and will use this as a backdoor.

It’s the same with screen time.

Apple and Google are surely delighted that the heat is on Meta and TikTok. As long as the pariah is being labelled as “social media” then their reputation goes untouched. They could be doing just as much, if not more, to protect adolescent brains from going rotten.

I’d like to see them held to account not so much for doing harm — pretty high framerate OLEDs are harder to treat as boogeymen than evil feed algorithms — but for not doing very much to help, either.

One alternative to bans could perhaps be if the EU created an IdP or something similar, with a fee for each authentication request, and then forced all commercial services within Europe to use it. I’m not sure if the fee should go back to the user or be paid as tax to the government, but either way, it would change the incentives around connecting traffic to you and making profit from it by harvesting data or steering recommendation engines.

Because I do think there’s nothing wrong with the government doing this, just like in the physical world.

And in some cases, we might prefer cheap authentications… like when posting comments, to avoid trolling/manipulation/bullying. Perhaps when doing “writes” on the internet, if there’s a robust way to identify that type of traffic.

I find it interesting that a law change was needed to allow schools to do this.

The Finnish language article about it is much thinner.

https://yle.fi/a/74-20204177

If you banned any network that does algorithmic feeds, or that don't have good moderation, then I'd be fine with my teenagers using it. I think the problem is the mind-numbing video scrolling more than any other risk with social media.

And I don't think there's a danger to it per se, I think it's just too addictive and distracting.

Social Media providers have spent the last 20 years to make everything more toxic, more harmful. They are aware that their products are damaging, but instead of trying to reduce the harm and to come up with some self-regulation ("Oh noes! Then we make less profit from harming teenagers! Impossible! Think for the Shareholders!") they spent all their money lobbying against any form of mitigation.

Just shut them all down.

Like YouTube. I would love to have parental settings, "no shorts", "no recommendations on video page". Kids could search and click on the creator to see more. Combine that with blocklists and curated allow lists. Boom, YouTube is not a problem. And kids getting bored of clicking around would be a feature.

It's interesting how few governments believe this. Your rulers know what's best for you, and it's not freedom.

Unfortunately, rationally thinking through 2nd and 3rd order effects is hard. As we see on social media, appeals to emotion drive the highest engagement, and "think of the children" is the ultimate emotional appeal.

But hey, with European countries moving to tie all internet activity to their national ID system to "protect the children from social media" and "ban speech we don't like" maybe we can finally get rid of those cookie popups?

Making Lambi Toilet Paper jump through bizarre hoops when targeting their toilet paper ads to people seems silly now...given we're voluntarily handing our browser history & permission to access the open web to a much more powerful entity (the government). Consumer goods companies combining your IP address and email address together for the purpose of selling you more toilet bowl cleaner...becomes a bit of a moot point, no?

I mean, sure, prime examples of what is colloquially called “social media” is crapware. I do get the intent.

But I wonder what sort of unintended, unplanned, odd and potentially even socially harmful consequences it would possibly have.

There will always be at least one country that has not rules and everyone will vpn there.

Danish minister was about to solve that nut airing ideas of banning vpn ( was of course dropped, most politicians have zero technical skills, not even rudimentary ones).

Of course this is all to protect the children.

I am unscientifically convinced that the average 12 year old is more technically apt that the entire adult governmental body of north europe.

If the will is there, they will circumevent it and the only outcome was another pointless level of buerocracy that is impossible to enforce.

target the algorithm instead. Its a more difficult area and harder to design that law and it would require understanding technology, the end result would be targeting the platforms, not the users. Possibly with hundreds of millions in fines and less predatory platform behaviour.

This low quality , protect the children yelp regulation set will have no long term effect whatsoever.

It is far to easy to circumvent.

I mean, if it affects a children’s what makes we think it doesn’t affect adults? Alcohol affects children, and it affects adults. If social media affects children, it also affects adults.

The big live social media was it was meant to connect people but in truth, it was designed to control people.

This will become closer to truth than conspiracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory

    Under 15

I am in my late thirties so surely out of touch, but am friends with people in their mid twenties and frankly I don't know anyone who spends any significant time on anything other than TikTok. I guess you could call TikTok "social media", but it wouldn't fit my old person definition.

I think pretty much everyone below the age of 60 is aware that Facebook/Instagram/etc is just slop now. You don't even see your friend stuff. You just see slop. I use Facebook primarily for marketplace these days, but when I do scroll my feed, it's all like weird east asian AI slop. Women cutting open impossibly large fruit, fake tartar removal, fake videos of fights.

Literally nothing that compels me to stay on the site like I hear people on here talk about.

In order to make a teenager stop doing something, all you need to do is show them videos of someone their parents' age doing it. Juxtapose a bunch of 40-somethings doing cringy little "TikTok dances" alongside people young enough to be their classmates, and they'll stop. Make another TikTok Cringe Compilation, but this time add more clips from middle-aged TikTok users.

My proposal might be insufficiently sophisticated and too actionable for the members of this community who think themselves to be righteous members of an enlightened class and who seek only to complain about current events to self-affirm their superiority. Nonetheless, I insist that anyone who will listen gives the following proposal consideration for the future of our children, whose FICA taxes shall pay for our retirements.