this is an egregious violation of their civil rights.

the law of unintended consequences looms large.

Australia does not have a bill of rights. Our freedoms are guaranteed by our participation in the electoral process which is very high. This government governs with a large majority and the social media legislation is broadly popular with parents and older people.

The law of unintended consequences will apply. The legislation has been written in such a way that there is some flexibility in the application and there are some safeguards but its not directly addressing some of the biggest social harms. It's primary purpose (despite the conspiracies) seems to be populism and being seen to do do something for the kiddies.

The much bigger social problem is gambling which is out of control here. The second, related problem, is the use of techniques and studies by the gambling industry in games and social media to increase engagement which is what is messing with peoples heads. The government does not dare to touch the gambling industry or stop algorithmic placement of content. This would cause immense damage to company profits and create lobbying pressure.

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NoPicklez 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Like what?

Kids not being able to do particular things until they're of age? That's much of an egregious violation of their civil rights.

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bccdee 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I think you could argue teenagers have a right to discuss political issues in the public forum. That's basically the definition of good citizenship, and (for better or worse) social media is the public forum of the day. Kids don't go from zero rights at 17 to full rights at 18; minors' rights are limited, but they do have rights.

I dunno if that'd fly in Australian courts though.

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NoPicklez 3 days ago | parent [-]

Well kids can discuss political issues across other discussion boards just not those on the social media sites impacted by the ban. They can also continue to do it say, in person in public.

I think the discussion of political issues in a sensible way on platforms like instagram, tiktok, X, Reddit etc for those ages is perhaps a lower priority than the mental health impacts that those platforms in general provide.

	▲	bccdee 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		What other discussion boards? They've all been subsumed by Reddit. I was on Reddit a lot as a teenager. I was the kind of argumentative kid who likes to iron out the wrinkles in their beliefs by defending them, and the internet offers and endless stream of people willing to discuss niche subjects. It had a positive impact on me. What mental health impacts? We haven't really established that social media has any, writ large. Jonathan Haidt's The Anxious Generation has been very influential in teen social media ban discourse (in fact, I'm not sure the Australian ban would have happened without it), but Haidt never manages to establish a link between social media and depression or anxiety [1]. People just assume social media is really bad for teens, but the extent to which this is true, the proportion of the population for which it is true, and the extent to which social media may actually be valuable to some teens (e.g. to gay kids in conservative towns who are looking for community) is just not established. I have a real problem with policy that seeks to cut teenagers off from communities they're part of without any interest in establishing the value provided by or the harm caused by those communities. [1]: Haidt notes that teen hospitalizations related to mental illness have risen since the early 2000s, discounts the recession and climate change as possible explanations, and then just assumes that social media is the only other explanation (it isn't; for instance, teens started getting hospitalized way more after Obamacare lowered the cost of hospital stays). Elsewhere, he's cited a self-report survey indicating that social media use had a high mental health impact on teens, but the indicated impact of social media was greater than the impact of binge drinking, which was greater than the impact of eating fruit, which was greater than the impact of having survived sexual assault (https://bsky.app/profile/michaelhobbes.bsky.social/post/3kxs...). So, that survey is not reliable. Basically, Haidt doesn't actually have any evidence of how bad social media is for teens. He relies on his audience already believing this intuitively.

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MomsAVoxell 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Kids not being informed about the war crimes of their state, and other states.

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NoPicklez 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

They can go and watch the news on the TV, they an also go and visit other news websites.

	▲	MomsAVoxell a day ago \| parent [-]
		Pretending that ‘news’ is an effective means of informing oneself is how we got into the mess of Western atrocities in the first place.

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barbazoo 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Kids not being informed about the war crimes

Interesting to frame this as a bad thing. As a parent, I would take that as a feature, not a bug. To me this is very suspicious why there seem to be so many people here, who I am assuming are mostly adults, advocating so strongly strongly for <16 olds told be on social media, as if it was something they need.

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trallnag 3 days ago | parent [-]

You sound like a Russian government official.

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barbazoo 3 days ago | parent [-]

Haha or a person who's been around lots of children of all ages.

An under 16 year old not seeing the social media version of war crimes is a good thing. And that's the upper limit of the age range of this ban.

	▲	MomsAVoxell a day ago \| parent [-]
		The “social media version of war crimes” is just .. war crimes. 15 - 16 year olds will grow up to inherit the war crimes of their state. The liabilities of the state are the responsibility of every single citizen. And, let us not forget, that a government is always and only ever held accountable to its citizens if those citizens are well informed. “Protecting children” is one thing. But a state that feels the need to defend itself from children - by mass murdering them at scale - is another thing entirely. Let us also not forget that the Australian government is a wholesale violator of human rights, and has committed genocide and participated in heinous war crimes with impunity, pretty much since its inception. This is a nation which was still practicing forced sterilization of cultures its ruling classes deemed inferior, well into the 1980’s. This is a nation that literally got away with the modern worlds’ first genocide. That state of affairs is never going to change if there are a generation of bootlickers, raised by the state, to never question the state. There will be a generation of Australians, in 3 or 4 years time, who will either strongly resist the totalitarian-authoritarian actions of their state - or they’ll participate in them.