Last fall, heavily influenced by Jonathan Haidt’s extremely problematic book, Australia announced that it was banning social media for everyone under the age of 16. This was already a horrifically …
so this is a far cry from the “ban” it has been hysterically portrayed as in the media.
I agree the media reporting has not been great, but my concern is more about slippery slope type effects where this will be extended to cover more and more sites. Some would argue that “slippery slope” arguments are fallacious, but I think there is a point here, especially when laws that can be argued to “protect children” are hard to roll back due to the political risk (and are easy to expand for the same reason).
I agree and I am concerned too, given that the Australian Government has a track record of encroaching on civil liberties under very vague “security” and “safety” justifications. I do think regulation in this area is very important, though, and that perhaps the only realistic way in which occurs is via some encroachment on our individual freedoms as netizens. I find a lot of people who claim to only be opposed to this specific implementation are actually just outright opposed to literally anything that even minutely affects them once you coax their ideology out a bit more, and I’m definitely not in that group. There is an important balancing act to make here between complete individual freedom and combating a widespread societal brain drain and mental health decline in young people, and my feeling is that many of the loudest opponents are only interested in the former, purely for selfish reasons.
I agree the media reporting has not been great, but my concern is more about slippery slope type effects where this will be extended to cover more and more sites. Some would argue that “slippery slope” arguments are fallacious, but I think there is a point here, especially when laws that can be argued to “protect children” are hard to roll back due to the political risk (and are easy to expand for the same reason).
I agree and I am concerned too, given that the Australian Government has a track record of encroaching on civil liberties under very vague “security” and “safety” justifications. I do think regulation in this area is very important, though, and that perhaps the only realistic way in which occurs is via some encroachment on our individual freedoms as netizens. I find a lot of people who claim to only be opposed to this specific implementation are actually just outright opposed to literally anything that even minutely affects them once you coax their ideology out a bit more, and I’m definitely not in that group. There is an important balancing act to make here between complete individual freedom and combating a widespread societal brain drain and mental health decline in young people, and my feeling is that many of the loudest opponents are only interested in the former, purely for selfish reasons.