After Australia, France is the second nation to vote for a social media ban for children (in Australia it’s under 16, in France under 15).
The negative effects of social media on children’s mental health are being discussed more often and the question how to regulate social media imposes itself. That said, laws like this would require age verification to be enforced, and age verification itself is a controversial subject. Age verification technology poses major problems for privacy and poses risks leakage of sensitive personal data.
KalaiProvenheim on
Wouldn’t a ban on addictive algorithms and more stringent (or any) regulations on social media content algorithms be much less intrusive?
Terrariola on
Nanny-statism is a contagion.
PlezantZenne on
IMO, this is a hamhanded approach to the problem of social media effects on children’s mental health that in practice only leads to a soft form of authoritarian surveillance.
*(disclaimer: do not misread this as an endorsement of JD Vance’s claims that Europe is authoritarian and anti “freeze peach” for trying to regulate social media, I am in favor of content platforms being held accountable for failing to properly moderate their content. This is a different problem altogether).*
The root cause of the problem is IMO social media companies deliberately making their algorithms as addictive as possible. But that is too hard to implement, so rather than that we’re just happy with a blanket ban on people under a certain age.
Disappointingly, this law was adopted with some 120+ votes for from Macron’s party, the far right, the right and a handful of center-lefties. Only 20 votes against, mostly from the left-wing La France Insoumise-Nouveau Front Populaire. I read the transcript of the debate hoping that the lefties would bring up the privacy concerns of age verification, but unfortunately the against camp didn’t even bring this up as a concern. The main arguments against seemed to be: “This kind of law is easy to circumvent” (which is a pretty dumb argument against any law) and “You claim to care about children’s mental health, yet you lowered the amount of school psychologists” (this is a valid criticism of the governement, but again it doesn’t really say anything about the validity of the law proposal itself).
I’ve noticed in discussions about these issues by politicians in different countries, there really aren’t too many voices bringing up the pressing concern of a government (or a third party company contracted by the government) having access to sensitive personal data linked to social media profiles. It only ever seems to be brought up by small and insignificant fringe civil libertarian parties like the Pirate Party. It seems digital literacy among the political class is pretty low.
Compared to what’s going on in the US this seems small potatoes but with the growing tide of authoritarianism around the world, I think it’s fair to be worried about the consequences (intended or unintended) of such legislation.
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Submission statement:
After Australia, France is the second nation to vote for a social media ban for children (in Australia it’s under 16, in France under 15).
The negative effects of social media on children’s mental health are being discussed more often and the question how to regulate social media imposes itself. That said, laws like this would require age verification to be enforced, and age verification itself is a controversial subject. Age verification technology poses major problems for privacy and poses risks leakage of sensitive personal data.
Wouldn’t a ban on addictive algorithms and more stringent (or any) regulations on social media content algorithms be much less intrusive?
Nanny-statism is a contagion.
IMO, this is a hamhanded approach to the problem of social media effects on children’s mental health that in practice only leads to a soft form of authoritarian surveillance.
*(disclaimer: do not misread this as an endorsement of JD Vance’s claims that Europe is authoritarian and anti “freeze peach” for trying to regulate social media, I am in favor of content platforms being held accountable for failing to properly moderate their content. This is a different problem altogether).*
The root cause of the problem is IMO social media companies deliberately making their algorithms as addictive as possible. But that is too hard to implement, so rather than that we’re just happy with a blanket ban on people under a certain age.
Disappointingly, this law was adopted with some 120+ votes for from Macron’s party, the far right, the right and a handful of center-lefties. Only 20 votes against, mostly from the left-wing La France Insoumise-Nouveau Front Populaire. I read the transcript of the debate hoping that the lefties would bring up the privacy concerns of age verification, but unfortunately the against camp didn’t even bring this up as a concern. The main arguments against seemed to be: “This kind of law is easy to circumvent” (which is a pretty dumb argument against any law) and “You claim to care about children’s mental health, yet you lowered the amount of school psychologists” (this is a valid criticism of the governement, but again it doesn’t really say anything about the validity of the law proposal itself).
I’ve noticed in discussions about these issues by politicians in different countries, there really aren’t too many voices bringing up the pressing concern of a government (or a third party company contracted by the government) having access to sensitive personal data linked to social media profiles. It only ever seems to be brought up by small and insignificant fringe civil libertarian parties like the Pirate Party. It seems digital literacy among the political class is pretty low.
Compared to what’s going on in the US this seems small potatoes but with the growing tide of authoritarianism around the world, I think it’s fair to be worried about the consequences (intended or unintended) of such legislation.
In France parents are not under legal responsibility to assure their kids don’t break the law. [https://www.leclubdesjuristes.com/societe/punir-les-parents-denfants-delinquants-les-enfants-et-les-principes-dabord-724/](https://www.leclubdesjuristes.com/societe/punir-les-parents-denfants-delinquants-les-enfants-et-les-principes-dabord-724/)
meaning the only way for this to work (parents policing their kids) isn’t there