For all those that think this is the government overstepping with an unenforceable law, you are not grasping the intent correctly. Declaring that we have democratically decided to have an age limit for social media means that we have laid the groundwork for collective action. This means that suddenly schools, parents, teenagers themselves, etc. all have a reason and a mandate for keeping young people off platforms that we believe to be detrimental to their development and well-being. True democratic culture lies not in bourgeoisie domination (as many Americans like to believe), but rather in mutual trust and cooperation in order to solve common and big problems.
Exactly!
It’s not about Totalizing Enforcement. What it changes is the cultural norm. Not right away but over time.
An age limit on alcohol never stopped anyone of any age to acquire alcohol, but it sets the societal bar for what’s acceptable. You don’t wanna be the parents that gave your kids alcoholic beverages at 13.
It’s always a little jarring how everyone very readily believes that the Scandinavian countries are the happiest in the world, but won’t believe that the incremental policy changes we implement here have any effect 🤷♂️
As a case study, we did this in 1988 with a smoking law that was incrementally improved with great success. It was controversial at the time, but is now generally regarded as such an obvious policy: no smoking in or around public transport, in bars and restaurants etc…
An age limit on alcohol
This has a very clear means of enforcement, since you can require age checks at the point of purchase and revoke licenses if someone violates that.
This law is a lot harder to enforce, because what exactly is “social media”? If the kids are all blocked from Facebook and whatnot, they could rally around the comments section of a local newspaper or something (or even something like Lemmy, which isn’t large enough to properly regulate). Kids are creative, and a lot of parents (at least here) are pretty oblivious to what they actually do on their devices.
So I’m skeptical of this law, but we’ll see how it plays out.
its the point where people say “but a sneaky vpn will get around so we may as well do nothing” is equivalent to “my friend can buy me a sneaky drink so we may as well do nothing”… just because you can exploit a law doesn’t make it invalid. enforcement concerns are valid, but it seems reasonable to start with “i agree there is a problem” and go for the 80% rule
That really depends on what the proposed solution looks like. My government implemented a similar law (included porn as well as social media), and the net result is that I either need to upload my government ID or use a VPN to access the site. I don’t trust these sites w/ my government ID, so I use a VPN. A lot of sites just don’t support my area, so even if I’m old enough, I can’t access the website. They’re more willing to take the loss than implement some kind of ID vetting.
When my kids want to sign up for social media accounts (and I’m okay with that), I’ll teach them how to use a VPN to get around the law so neither they nor I have to upload our IDs, and they’ll probably teach their friends and whatnot.
That said, if age verification checks were simplified to a debit/credit card payment authorization (and not even an actual payment), then you’d automatically prove that they’re old enough to have access to a debit/credit card, no government ID needed. The bank will check your ID, and if you’re a minor, the parent will have to approve the account. That would be acceptable to me, because maintains the bar for most kids, while still having a reasonable way for a parent to provide access without doxxing either of them (except the name printed on the card, that is).
That’s why I’m skeptical, but willing to see how it plays out. My local law certainly ticked me off though.
Most kids here in Norway get a bank account with debet card and BankID with it at 13. Implementing a solution to use it to verify if you are older than X years old would actually be less work than your proposed solution, both for the social media site, banks, the kids and the parents.
I would be very much against tying my social media accounts to a government services one. I know it can be correlated if needed, but the government automatically neatly having this information all in one place? No thanks, it’s outright dangerous.
Yeah, I wouldn’t want my account tied to my bankid either. But bankid could easily make an age verification that wasn’t tied to accounts.
True democratic culture lies not in bourgeoisie domination (as many Americans like to believe), but rather in mutual trust and cooperation in order to solve common and big problems.
American here who has visited Scandinavia a couple times.
There are so many little differences, but they add up to a staggering divide in the amount of mutual trust and cooperation you see in little everyday interactions.
Well.
Anything good I encounter in cultures that interest me is similar to the matching part of the Scandinavian cultures, or so it would seem.
And in this particular case it is so.
But in general I don’t like this optimism of “you don’t understand, it’s different in our land of elves as opposed to your sorry piece of clay with goblins in it”.
Centralized social media, controlled by companies, I’d want to be just banned. These are all harm and no good. But in general - see about optimism.
Could be I am being dense, but I do not understand what you are saying at all.
That happens, I do enjoy playing with sentence structure, and don’t enjoy following the rules of English grammar strictly.
I wanted to say that you are right in this particular case, yes, but you are wrong in your idea that government overreach in Scandinavia is somehow different from it in other places.
Okay, so I never wanted to say that this was unique to Scandinavia. The important part was how we have a a lot of trust based systems (which of course probably exists elsewhere too, but not everywhere) that are really formative for how we make policy and implement it.
This trust should translate to trust to other people, but this has been eroded away for some time because the social contract is being violated.
Most importantly with respect to elf/goblin part: I found that distasteful and resent the implication that I said anything to that degree. I do not think people are fundamentally different, only that the conditions (material basis and social superstructures) that they find themselves in allow for and promotes certain kinds of actions and ways of being.
Most importantly with respect to elf/goblin part: I found that distasteful and resent the implication that I said anything to that degree. I do not think people are fundamentally different, only that the conditions (material basis and social superstructures) that they find themselves in allow for and promotes certain kinds of actions and ways of being.
In Tolkien’s lore goblins were made from elves through torture and various degrading conditions and magic.
I agree about trust, but it can’t be global, only friend-to-friend, in real life as well.
And trust in government should be taboo.
I thought it was Morgoth, a valar and not an elf, who made them. In any case it twists the causal relationship because the goblins subsequently make their own pitiful conditions. I do not condone the terminology even if solely on the basis of how reductionist it is. Since a government is, in its pure form, only a body of people, you can translate trust between people and trust between a government if it is sufficiently representative.
Since a government is, in its pure form, only a body of people,
That implies that logical structure of that body is negligible, if used to transfer human traits to a government.
Enforcing it is virtually impossible.
You are correct, but i’d like to expand a bit on how it could be solved.
It requires that all major social networks use BankID for all traffic from Norway.
Bypassing it would require a VPN, which is a simple hurdle.
But the major win here is that parents will enforce this. Parents can point to this law and say that they have to be old enough. As long as enough parents enforce this law and the VPN requirement is there, then it will probably be effective enough
So you need a BankID to open an account on the covered platforms? That seems like a privacy nightmare.
In Scandinavia every citizen has a registration number and the government has deployed state-enforced online digital identity system.
It’s not a privacy nightmare if you can trust the government. And in Scandinavia you generally can.
I mean… the government already has all your information. If you distrust them with your information, you have an odd problem to overcome. The corpos, however, shouldn’t have all this data on you.
Depends on where you live. Many places you can’t trust the government and they know almost nothing about you.
That’s a fair point.
Everyone in Norway has one, well like 99,99% or something. It is a requirement for banking.
It is used for all banking services in Norway. When you get your own bank account at 13 or something you also get BankID.
it’s a privacy nightmare as it relies on google and apple servers to authenticate verification. neither of which are private. it also makes it impossible for european alternative operative systems to enter the market - giving a foreign state, the US, full control over what we can and can’t do.
Can you elaborate a bit on the google and apple servers for authentication? My impression was that this system uses its own platform.
BankID is it’s own trusted platform. It is not connected to any of them. I am not sure if I understand what the other person is trying to say. Maybe they are afraid that Google and Apple can use BankID verified sessions to better identify the user?
They are using the phone SDKs to verify that BankID was correctly installed, much like any other client side DRM.
We have SmartID and MobiilID in Estonia too, but you don’t need it to log onto social media. You only need it
Right. But Facebook shouldn’t have that number.
As far as I understand, BankID actually abstracts away those numbers. FB have to use an API, and more or less receive a true or false on their query.
They recently opened up for using BankID to prove your age at bars and such, and I think they only get to know if person is old enough or not. Not even a number, just old enough.
This is the right way to protect privacy. Auditable government departments have your data anyways. They don’t provide the data to companies, but they answer questions like “old enough to drink?” With yes no answers.
The government can keep a log of what sites asked for such a proof though, and better assume they do.
If truly masked, it might be fine. But the site has to gather that data in order to append it to the API call and it, therefore, mean that they could keep it (even of they actually may not). There are ways around it, such as with session tokens passed between the social media’s page and the bank’s official API page. But, knowing fb, they won’t use the latter.
I’m not Norwegian or in Norway and I’m definitely doing this - my kids know of the problems of social networking (including the latest TikTok court docs and what the execs say.)
Some friends say that’s over the top; I just say it is responsible, involved parenting. I value their mental health.
And a 14 year old kid using a VPN is probably not the target audience for a lot of the worst abuse.
Not saying it won’t happen, but a drastic reduction is better than none.
+1, where I live they made phones during school hours illegal. Literally NOTHING changed it’s just that if they want to they can get people in trouble.
How do you do, fellow Norwegian Lemmings? I sure do love being under fifteen, who’s with me, right?
Huh? So…only children get to use social media…?
Every finite range has 2 limits. A bottom limit and a top limit.
Ah, ok, so it might only be newborns.
This isn’t a finite range.
Get off my Lemmy kids
Sad to see people here supporting the same kinds of policies that are diametrically opposed to privacy on the internet.
Parental control softwares are always parents failing to take the time to properly educate themselves and their children to the internet, as well as trust issue towards their children, which is bad parenting since it leads children into lying to them and finding alternatives as well as feeling seen “as a child”, bad for teens…
Moreover those softwares are, as I said earlier nearly malwares
Most parents don’t know, don’t care. Social media has been proven to be bad for kids, it’s nothing new, this is a good thing
Social media has been proven to be bad for kids Way too broad statement, which social media, which kids, how “bad”? There’s no scientific statement without those precision, and the broad opposite of your broad statement could as well be “proven” using studies
Don’t stop at social media. Put that same limit on religion, too.
It’s norway, so that’s kinda pointless
You’re right. I was just talking in a broader scope.
Are you pointing out how you don’t like this law or are you actually suggesting we ban religion for kids?
People should be of legal age before officially joining a religion.
Agreed
I’m gonna go with what home dude below said. “People should be of legal age before officially joining a religion.”
I’m thinking neither one is really enforceable.
How do they define what a social media is?
And most importantly: How would they enforce that? Kids have been lying about their ages since the dawn of internet.
I don’t think they really need to.
Laws are often just an acknowledgement of a society’s expectation.
“We’ve all decided that kids under 15 using social isn’t great.”
The fact that this law exists makes it infinitely b easier for parents to establish and maintain rules in their household, because peer pressure is minimised.
Yes, some kids will still use social before they’re 15. Perhaps most kids. However, I think harmfully excessive use will be minimised.
Porn sites have age limits, we know this doesn’t mean shit. No middleschooler gets condemned for watching porn.
The enforcing part is where this is likely to get shitty. Once they establish this as a law they maybe will try and sue companies that don’t provide an age check on their websites. Now if that is possible I am not sure, seeing as many of those are having HQs in Ireland or Netherlands due to tax reasons.
But if that is successful it would mean they actually have to check everyone’s age by some means, which means collecting IDs. Which definitely is bad news for users, we all know that data won’t be securely stored or deleted.
Not sure how else this could go down.
Would probably require the sites to use Bank ID during signups from Norway.
Bank ID is a national system for confirming identity.
Sounds dystopian as fuck. Also, they can just pretend they’re not from Norway.
Now Meta not only knows your name and where you live and your darkest secrets but your legal ID too — fun!
Not saying you might be right, but this could be solved with a simple API that returns yes/no for the age check, without providing additional information.
And this is the problem with any age verification online… there’s always some lurking privacy invasion. It’s for your own good.
Since Leisure Suit Larry at least. ;) Since alcohol sales were restricted to adults? Since… ?
I know I have been surfing the hub ever since I was 13
Just like everyone on the internet.
Probably networks where users post personal data in conjunction with chat features. Obviously, Wikipedia is not social media in this regard and neither is a mailing list.
Yeah I want to know if YouTube and any website with comments (eg all news sites) are social media
It will just be the ones they don’t get kickbacks from.
What about Ecommerse site where you can interact with other buyers, talk to the seller and reply to people’s reviews? Isnt that a social media?
No, that’s quite obviously not social media.
If anything, it would be far better to ban people above a certain age from social media. I’ve seen far more older people get sucked in by online misinformation and become extreme conspiracy theorists than kids.
It’s not the government’s job to tell adults to not partake in self-harm. Kids don’t know better.
But government can take away the means or incentive for self harm. It is just a matter of society agreeing. That will never happen in the USA and Americans are fine. Norway agreed and they are fine.
and Americans are fine.
Right… the land of the free is clearly an example for everyone, the epitome of societal progress.
Sorry, but that logic is absolute and total bullshit.
Adults are extremely bad at making decisions in their best interests too. Why does the government have to oppress kids to protect them, but you when the exact same logic is applied to adults, that’s a problem?
It’s all oppression. It’s all wrong. Kids should have autonomy too.
It’s you who was suggesting adults of certain age should be banned from social media, not me. You don’t get to then say ‘It’s all oppression. It’s all wrong.’ in the next sentence. You’re being a hypocrite.
There’s a good reason we don’t let kids eat sand, hit their friend, drive cars, vote, watch porn, drink alcohol and smoke tobacco. Their brains are undeveloped. They don’t know any better. They’re entitled to autonomy when they’re capable of it.
My point was that anyone sensible would immediately see the problem with my suggestion, and that would perhaps lead them to understand why enforcing the same rule against kids is wrong.
And again, I’m sorry, but your reasoning is weak as fuck. Would you take away the rights of someone with an intellectual disability from watching porn or smoking?
If anything, it would be far better to ban people above a certain age from social media.
Yeah, sure. That screams that you don’t advertise, but rather oppose banning adults and above that all age groups. You are backpedaling and moving the goal posts. It would be much more adult to accept the flaw of your first comment.
Would you take away the rights of someone with an intellectual disability from watching porn or smoking?
I think the idea is that kids brains are still developing, so their decision-making should be considered temporarily impaired. If their brains won’t develop further, then there’s not really any reason to restrict them from things that only harm themselves (e.g. smoking and drinking), though they should potentially have some guardrails around other people harming them (e.g. scams and other forms of fraud).
That said, I’m against this law. I think parents should be responsible for what media their children consume, and this law could conceivably be used against parents who make sure their kids are safely interacting w/ social media, and it could motivate the kids who need the supervision to be more discrete (i.e. use a VPN).
Again, this argument is extremely weak and fails under even the slightest investigation.
Firstly, the claim that kids brains are developing but adults’ brains aren’t is just factually untrue. Redditors love to repeat a little “factoid” about 25 being the age that the brain matures, but it’s just not true. Everyone develops differently and some people may be functionally mature in their mid teens, others may take much longer. Additionally there’s not really an end point where the brain stops developing, so everyone’s brains are always developing. So now you have to draw a line about, how much development is enough? and that asks the question, how do you measure brain development? And there’s actually not really any good answer to that question.
Even if you had some vague range under which brains are developed, which again, we don’t have - where would you draw a line? Anywhere you put it is going to be arbitrary and exclusionary. If you place it somewhere, let’s say, 18, then ask yourself - is it conceivable that there could be a 17 year old who would be capable and mature enough to take on this responsibility? If your answer is yes, then by making that line 18, you’re being ageist.
99% of all oppressions against young people are not justifiable.
there’s not really an end point where the brain stops developing
Sure, but the “25 years old” figure comes from when the pre-frontal cortex is sufficiently developed (i.e. reaches peak volume). That part of the brain has a lot to do with cognitive control, and it’s generally a time when most people have made or are about to make very long-term decisions, such as careers, relationships, etc.
The age of 18 for being an “adult” is even more arbitrary, 25 is a pretty decent cut-off that has some scientific merit. I’m not saying we should base any laws on it, I’m just saying that after that point, you’re probably about as prepared to make these types of choices as you’ll ever be, so if you have a mental development disability, we should probably end any restrictions around that time unless you specifically opt-in to additional protections.
is it conceivable that there could be a 17 year old who would be capable and mature enough to take on this responsibility?
Sure, which is why every rule like this should have exceptions. For example, I think we should allow 16yos (and perhaps 15yos) to vote, if they can answer important questions about how government works (i.e. what does a Senator do vs a House Rep?), policy choices of various candidates, etc. As in, demonstrate that they are actually interested in politics instead of just being pushed/manipulated by their parents/other adults. That type of “test” should exist for any policy where there’s an age gate. Who is in power absolutely will impact 16yos before they get a chance to vote, so it makes a ton of sense to give them a say if they’re aware of the political process.
But once you’re an adult, society has essentially decided that you’re free to screw up your life. We let you smoke, drink (in some areas), go into debt, join the military, etc. If we’re okay with that, there’s no reason to limit your choices on other things as well.
Going back to the topic at hand, if this law needs to exist, there should be a way for younger kids to demonstrate understanding of the dangers of social media, how to recognize predators, etc in order to get access before that legal cutoff. But even if that exists, I’m still against it because of the privacy violations that would need to exist to actually enforce this law. If this is just a token law and is effectively neutered by other privacy laws, maybe it’s not an issue. I don’t know Norwegian law, but I do have a similar law here and it absolutely involves privacy violations to enforce (i.e. have to provide government-issued ID to many websites now).
Would you take away the rights of someone with an intellectual disability from watching porn or smoking?
That’s a perfectly valid discussion to be had.
Kids are disadvantaged in a number of ways compared to adults
- the obvious factor is that the prefrontal cortex is not developed. they simply do not have the capacity to make fully informed decisions.
- another factor is the simple lack of experience. when you compare an 8 year old to an adult, that adult has been through a lot of shit in their life. they learned a thing or two and that gives him the ability to sniff out bullshit much more easily than a child. think of it as the bullshit immune system
- kids don’t have the resources that adults do. they typically don’t have access to credit cards so the free things on the internet attract them more easily. websites (really apps these days) prey on this fact.
Ok? Well that’s what an age limit would imply, isn’t it?
We shouldn’t blocked the social media, they are pure shit, don’t get me wrong, but we should only educate correctly the people to show them how bad it is
With that logic we should give everyone a nuclear bomb and teach them not to press the button. Let’s see how that works out.
Big tegh companies spend billions on ways to influence your behaviour, making it even difficult for adults to not fall for their traps, let alone kids with still very much underdeveloped brains. Just look at all the stupid things you had done when you were a kid.
My answer was an ideal thing, but it will not happened soon because of the big corporates, they are keeping us for profit. You’re absolutely right that it’s the fault of corporations.
With that logic we should give everyone a nuclear bomb
And in here lies the problem of using bad analogies.
What?! Are you implying the parents should educate their kids better? How dare you!?
That ship has long sailed. Most teens will find a way and the ones that don’t will be social rejects.
Social media is fundamentally a part of our social fabric. There’s no going back on that. Instead, collectively we should promote healthier social networks not prohibit them. Norway is fucking stupid here.
Also, wtf are Norvegian parents doing with their infinite oil money they don’t have time to care for their teens?
We don’t have to accept corporations selling ads that target young people and using algorithms to take advantage of them.
And Norwegian parents are doing what many are doing; caring for their kids to the best of their abilities. That oil money has provided good social services and these teens do have access to healthcare, including mental, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t teenagers still. They necessarily require some independence. That’s growing up, so you can’t just parent around every problem. Hence restricting some things, like cigarettes and alcohol for example.
I don’t see this much differently. It is a hazardous drug that warrants some consideration. Enforcement is fraught but that doesn’t mean we should just sit on our hands and accept it as is.
personally I think it’s the phone that’s more the problem. the persistent access seems like it contributes more to habit forming than the nebulous definition of social media. and that’s much easier to define and possible enforce.
prohibition simply doesn’t work. Especialy with social constructs. Try telling teens that they shouldn’t listen to a specific music genre lol
There are million other better ways to handle and this law just seems like a bunch of populist drivel:
Therefore, the next step will be to push forward an age verification solution specifically for social media.
So, now because some parents suck at parenting I should provide my ID to Instagram? How incredibly dumb is that?
As a parent myself I’m so tired of shitty parents ruining it for everyone. Just talk with your kids, it’s really not that hard.
Interesting. Not going to debate much further with you, but I’m always a bit envious when I run into other parents who claim they have 100% control over their kids. I don’t. My child is grown now, but I absolutely did not. They were their own person, that no matter how much I talked to them had their own life and struggles.
And prohibition does work in some cases. See, cigarettes. Smoking has been in the fall for a long time especially among the young.
But I’m glad your kid will never have any problems ever and if they do that you admit it could have been solved by you talking to them.
I was under the impression that kids don’t smoke anymore because it is not trendy like it was in my parents’ times. But they do drink alcohol. And especially they do vape.
Interesting how in parents’ times, you did not have to be 18 to buy alcohol… But juvenile alcoholism is a much bigger problem now. As if there is some bigger underlying reason…
I’m really confused by this perspective and your comparsion to cigarettes is completely inadequette — you can’t compare substances to social constructs.
If parents can’t influence their kids how is goverment powered prohibition supposed to do that?
List one social construct that is successfully prohibited by a governing body and actually provides societal value. The only thing comes to mind is porn and take a look how fucking twisted countries where porn is supressed are. This is some north korea level of stupidity.
This law is unprecedented and usually I’d say it should be approached with great care but clearly it’s just populist virtue signaling because it’s simply stupid and is backed by zero scientific or intelectual basis.
I agree that it is unprecedented and should be handled thoughtfully. Nevertheless a corporate website is not a social construct. There is no talk of banning socialization. Maybe you thought they meant social networks in the traditional sense (social group connections) but they are referring to websites. So cigarettes is a perfectly suitable analogy, which is why I can understand your dismissal.
So let me just clarify. Norwegian parents are bad, even though kids here are doing pretty well when compared globally. Regulating how young people interact with the world never works and is bad. So, underage drinking should be allowed, smoking, driving at 8, no age of consent? And parents can just talk to their kids to fix all the problems that happen, including psychological manipulation for financial gain? And anybody that has issues or is taken advantage of just has bad parents? Those who think society has a role to play are just virtue signaling?
Where are you getting “corporate website”? when it would affect all social media websites including Lemmy and Mastodon or your moms blog comments.
The idea of online social exchange of opinions or experiences is absolutely a social construct. We literally didn’t have this and now it’s part of every single person’s life in some shape. How can you just prohibit that? Imagine prohibiting phone calls lol it’s incredibly stupid.
Again you compare this to substances and driving? You can’t be serious here? If you can’t even understand this issue then you shouldn’t be parenting let alone tell other people how to.
It could affect those things. But like I agreed with before, it should be handled carefully and this is a big reason. I distinguish simply between Facebook for example and ma’s blog. One tries to make money by gathering data and targeting advertising to people intentionally addicted to a platform. The other is, you know… a blog.
If the law outlawed the online exchange of ideas, I too would be among its biggest opponents but that is probably a strawman.
As far as me parenting? Sure. With the benefit of hindsight, I’m not sure I was fit either, but I did my best.
And prohibition does work in some cases. See, cigarettes. Smoking has been in the fall for a long time especially among the young.
Prohibition only feeds black markets.
Its possible to have back and forth conversation on a wikipedia user talk page, are they banning wikipedia too? The comments section on a news website? Desktop email clients and hotmail accounts?
I can’t see a way where this doesn’t end up being used to restrict information from wider society. Even just banning kids from the internet, is restricting millions of people who deserve to be able to access the resources on the www
You’re acting like Wikipedia talk pages and especially news site comment sections are some bastions of discourse 😆
They’re all cesspools of shit that don’t bring any joy to anyone except trolls, pedants and energy vampires
What a weird take…
They are allowed on the web, they are not allowed sign up to be members of social media websites. Information should be freely available without being logged in, if it isnt then maybe the platform if the problem not the person or government.
Im eager to know if you are just a negative person looking for flaws or have some legitimate concern you failed to express.
Government doing parenting now? Bad idea.
Is it? Not dealing with “the other kids have social media so I can too”!
Governments have always been involved in parenting and the education of kids.
What exactly do you think schools are?
a production line for corporate slaves.
I would highly recommend listening to the If Books Could Kill podcast about the book “The Anxious Generation”. I feel like it’s probably one of their weaker episodes, if I’m honest, because they kind of have a preconceived bias against social media, but I think they basically come around to the conclusion that there is basically no compelling evidence that social media is particularly harmful to young people, in a general sense, and that on the whole, it’s also very useful for young people.
This is just yet more oppression of young people dressed up as if it’s for their best interests.
Oppression of young people is the only one that seems to get worse over time
Oppression?! FFS… can’t even look at 'em the wrong way nowadays and it’s oppression… i guess it’s better than repression!
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