UK Politics Thread (Part 5)

Lets be honest, social media is complete dogshit. Responsible for so much of the crap that is wrong with modern society.

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My two are still too young. I actually feel fortunate I will get to see a few years of data re pushing back on it before I have to deal with the questions in a proper way (my 7 year old asked for a phone a few months ago).

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Agree.
But its a token “look what we’re doing” gesture from government, knowing full well it’ll make little difference.
Akin to the various no smoking gestures.
If people want to smoke they’ll smoke.
If they REALLY had the health of people at heart, they’d have banned cigarettes. But that would cost too much.
Same with social media outlets.
Just shut it down altogether, its fucking toxic anyway.

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I’m ok with heavy regulation but think that it should be aimed at those that create the content and those that facilitate it. There should be mechanisms in place that hold both responsible/accountable for the out put on a particular platform. May be too idealistic and too late…

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Very much agree with this.

If a car company kept making cars that killed teenagers…

(Bit of a tortured metaphor…)

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Yeah it had crossed my mind. Are they taxing the company or salaries? Many care homes are private of course which would be different.

This.
If a teenager commits suicide through social media bullying then put the cunt that implemented the algorithm, and the CEO of the operating company in the dock.
But no, lets ban teens from using it

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yep.

and its been a positive. my daughter recently just turned 16 and was able to access it again, but the reset was great for her. i think she still hasnt bothered with Tik Tok.

i understand all the counter arguments, but honestly, its a net positive, short of just banning the shite alltogether becuase lets face it it actually provides no service that cant be achieved through better structured chanels, id say from personal exposure to the ban…its a great idea.

maybe all social media accounts should be forced to time out after 2 years…so many people/kids end up with accounts so vast. deleting an associate/friend you no longer have contact with seems a bit of a taboo, but you litterally dont need them there…

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just do both.

again, from previous post, its one of those things thats really not that complicated… just ban the shite, its not like its an infringement on human rights or anything, its a net positive.

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CEO’s in the dock is not a thing.

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Couldn’t you say the same about fags or booze?

To continue from the above, is a banning kids from smoking and drinking virtue signalling?

Accusing a government - who have a duty of care to children - of virtue signalling is a really absurd thing to accuse them of.

From my own experience, I have a 15 year old and we were talked into letting him have Snapchat and Instagram. It is one of the worst things we ever did. Thankfully he fucked up so badly that we were able to justify taking those accounts away, but it only confirmed my worries that children should not be using social media and there is increasing academic that this is the case.

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Yep.
Banning kids from using it is good, but it’s the “easy option” which we all know kids will find ways round it.
Crack down on the operators.
Review and change your algorithms and settings or we’ll fucking shut you down.

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I very much agree (although to be fair, banning would bring the total volume down) and it’s what many people work for (that the owners should regulate their apps and be forced to allign them to European law). Personally, I am really looking forward to the EU ruling on AI, soc-med and ethics; because that can actually force the big brands to change and act.

I don’t see a big Freedom of Speech argument for banning it for those under 18, but I find the idea a bit too authoritarian myself (in an annoying nanny-way, not in an “OMG, it’s Orwell’s 1984”, I note) if done by the state. Parents should be allowed to make such a decision though.

But yes, what you said…

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https://x.com/AlistairCarns/status/2066595736708317331

This is very factual. Disinformation and making people doubt facts and the words of their government (lose trust in), is half the operation.

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Sure but as Magnus answered surely there has to be better way to do this. Banning is simply letting the companies and, possibly more importantly, the creators off the hook with also a generous dollop of voter appeasement. Like alcohol, cigarettes and now vapes, a ban will not work - there will always be ways to get around it.

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exacrly for mine. none of them are on socials other than whatsapp to communicate.

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Been operating in South Aust for a few months now,the consensus is the kids have it well sorted…as you’d expect.

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The argument that kids will do it anyway is like saying allow them to smoke because they’ll do it behind the bike sheds.
It’s putting up a barrier, making it more difficult, and it gives the parents a strong argument for enforcement.
No ban is watertight. People take drugs, steal, murder, but we don’t legalise those things because the law is sometimes broken.

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I’m a big smoker however I didn’t want my kids to become smokers. My strategy was to try and educate them yet at the same time make them feel free to smoke even Infront of me if they wished. This meant I knew what and how much they smoked and we could talk about it freely which in turn helped with the education.
I think the most difficult period was when it involved shit and my daughter went through a shisha stage.
I am pleased to say that neither smoke now they are adults and we kept it to just recreational smoking at worst when they were adolescents.
I think it’s much harder for smoking parents to impress on their kids the importance not to start.
However banning can cause a rebel response (depending on relationships between the banned and banner).
I do note that when it comes to social media my kids have a very unconcerned attitude compared to me. I’ve always been very suspicious and reticent. I really don’t think ‘that’ generation would understand a ban despite all the warnings they might hear if they watched some serious information.

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I agree and disagree. Vaping is may be a (distant?) parallel. In the linked page below, an ash. survey found that 7% of teenagers vap - which equates to about 400k individuals. Seems a bit high and that is with the law enforcing it. I wonder if greater education on the harm it causes at an early age, say from 7-10 years of age, may have been more effective at curbing its prevalence.

Use of vapes (e-cigarettes) among young people in Great Britain - ASH.

edit. in the Uk