I get why people from certain countries instinctively see any government involvement as bad, but I don’t think that’s a universal truth? Yes, bad government can do enormous harm, but I think good government can also raise society above what would happen if everyone were simply left to their own devices.

As others have noted, we already accept a long list of age-based rules: alcohol, driving, tobacco, gambling, movies and games, compulsory schooling, consent, marriage, tattoos, credit cards, pornography, firearms, etc.

Seen in that context, restricting social media for children isn’t some unprecedented intrusion - it’s another attempt to limit access to something that appears harmful for younger people. Will it work? I can only hope. But it seems reasonable to at least try.

I’m not claiming this opinion fits every country - it may be due to biases of where I live. Where I am (and in my opinion), social media seems like a clear and massive net negative, especially for kids. Perhaps in some places social media is a genuinely positive part of daily life, and from that perspective the same law might look like needless government overreach.

Broadly, I agree with your sentiment. As soon as some people rule over others, given enough time, things creep towards total enslavement and disenfranchisement of the others. This has been proven over and over.

The question then becomes, how do we organise society instead?

YOUR government might be a bigger threat than anything YOU might find online, but this statement is just not generally true whatsoever. Given how broad this argument is, if anything, it’s an argument for improving government, not getting rid of it. Every freedom has two sides, the more positive freedoms you get, the less negative freedoms you get, and vice versa. There is no possibility of “infinite freedom”, it’s always zero sum, and so always a balance on a per topic basis, which hyperreductive arguments like this (“state level infringements of freedom”) totally ignore.

> I'm being a bit facetious here...

Maybe just don't do that? It's never helpful in good-faith discussions and just indicates a lack of empathy and maybe a lack of understanding of the actual issue being discussed.

> So, you haven't identified any actual problems with them being on social media though.

The problems GP raised seem pretty clear to me. Could gives us some examples of what you would consider to be "actual problems" in this context?

> Just that kids are doing something new and sometimes scary...

Any sane parent wouldn't send their kids to learn to ride a bicycle on the open road and without any supervision. You'd find a park or an empty lot somewhere, let them test it out, assess their ability to deal with potential dangers and avoid harming others at the same time, and let them be on their own once they are able to give you enough confidence that they can handle themselves most of the time without your help.

The problem with today's social media for children is that that there is no direct supervision or moderation of any kind. Like many have pointed out, social media extends to things like online games as well, and the chance that you will see content that are implicitly or explicitly unsuitable for children is extremely high. Just try joining the Discord channels of guilds of any online game to see for yourself.

Not all things new and scary come with a moderate to high risk of irreparable harm.

Its not parenting as a service. Its not even in the same world as rock in roll. Do you think its ok to have smoking, gambling and sex ads shown on tv during the afterschool 3pm-5pm timeslot? Social media is effectively that x100 because TV ads followed advertising restrictions.

On social media kids will be subjected to undisclosed advertising for all kinds of products legal and illegal. They will be directly targeted and manipulated into real world harm situations and mental manipulation into harmful mindsets.

Most of this cannot be prevented by "being a watchful parent". If your kid watches andrew tate and you see and put a restriction youtube will recommend them a tate adjacent channel or one of the 1million alts that posts clips. Same for tiktok, X and Instagram.The only control you have is to ban them from using the platform which is a roundabout way of achieving the same thing.

Sigh, I'll bite (even though I know I shouldn't, and it's pointless).

> So, you haven't identified any actual problems with them being on social media

Anonymous cyber bullying (multiple times), performative social exclusion (multiple times), anonymous death threats (twice), deepfake porn with their faces spliced in (twice).

Your straw-man example is absurd and TBH it comes across as patronising. I'm trying to avoid assumptions, but it reads like someone who hasn't needed to grapple with this issue personally as a primary carer. Apologies if that isn't the case; everyone has their own view for what parenting should be.

Somehow we've seen fit (as a society) to regulate the minimum age for sex & marriage, obtaining alcohol, acquiring a vehicle licence, etc. We (as a society) recognise that there are good & bad tradeoffs to these activities and have regulated freedoms around these (primarily via age). Somehow, our society hasn't spontaneously regressed into North Korea.