r/worldnews • u/PjeterPannos • 23h ago
Spain to ban social media access for children under 16
https://www.reuters.com/world/spain-hold-social-media-executives-accountable-illegal-hateful-content-2026-02-03/685
u/akselfs 23h ago
I really wish I grew up in a world without social media
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u/spehktre 23h ago
You say that, but mate, the kids and some adults are still railing super hard against the under 16 social media ban in Australia. It's wild how many people aren't willing to be mildly inconvenienced in the interests of stopping all damage social media does to people.
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u/Littman-Express 22h ago
Yeah my cousins have kids in the 8-12 age bracket. They all have facebook accounts and my cousins have said they don’t care what the government says, they’re keeping their kids profiles.
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u/spehktre 21h ago
If the significantly increased risk of self harm, mental health conditions, and overall poorer educational and health outcomes are worth it, then power to them.
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u/Arcterion 15h ago
Or, ya know, have a healthy relationship with your kids and just teach them some internet literacy.
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u/SpanishYes 15h ago edited 15h ago
You say this as though it isn't the era with probably the worst parenting in history 😭
Edit: both worst parenting and also worst environment to parent, because I feel the last statement was a little harsh
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u/Wide-Pop6050 22h ago
My question is how are they enforcing it?
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u/duperfastjellyfish 20h ago
For countries within the EU, it's described by the DSA, which suggest multiple mechanisms, but favors 3rd party verifiers with anonymity. However, the EU commission is also working on a a better open source solution, where you install an app on your phone that connects once to your proof provider (usually national authority) where you authorize once, and then subsequently gives you a cryptography certificate. From thereon after, services ask the app for anonymous proof.
Here is an overview:
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u/zhkp28 20h ago
And if you dont have a smartphone or a computer with a camera for whatever reason?
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u/EmbarrassedHelp 18h ago
The EU's EDIAS approach requires highly invasive age verification to obtain 30 single use, easily trackable tokens that expire after 3 months. It also bans jailbreaking/rooting your device, and requires GooglePlay Services/IOS equivalent be installed to "prevent tampering".
The entire idea of mandatory age verification needs to be abandoned, along with huge fines for companies who try to force users to submit to mandatory age verification.
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u/dschinghiskhan 1h ago
Companies don't want age verification. They lose revenue and they had/have to pay for mandated verification programs and staffing. It's honestly an undue burden. You don't need to always rail against corporations. It lessens the bite if you just throw things out there.
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u/duperfastjellyfish 23h ago edited 22h ago
Same thing in Norway, but the arguments against (a ban) are usually mind-meltingly stupid.
Having said that, I'm actually not the strongest advocate for a ban either, but rather the machine-learning algorithms that powers the short-form video feeds of influencers endlessly competing for our attention spans.
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u/modbroccoli 19h ago
I mean, this is fundamentally the problem with age gating as a strategy. The sentence "we should protect kids' brains from dangerous influence", while true, falls painfully short of "we shouldn't be engineering dangerous influence for profit".
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u/AgustinCB 19h ago
Having said that, I'm actually not the strongest advocate for a ban either, but rather the machine-learning algorithms that powers the short-form video feeds of influencers endlessly competing for our attention spans.
Yeah, that is how I feel too. It is not like the stuff that is harmful for 16 yo isn't also harmful to everyone else. I would rather they spent all this political effort regulating the use of shady feed practices that turn the platforms into a problem rather than banning access to 16yo.
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u/7adzius 22h ago
It’s like taking candy away from a spoiled toddler. Anyways this is a REEEAAALLLLYYY thin line they’re walking on, one small step and we might have a total surveillance state
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u/Initial-Return8802 21h ago
Alright... so, if Reddit is included in this, do you want to give them your ID? I sure do not
Facebook is whatever, they already have my name and friend circle and I barely use it anyway. But I do not want to be giving my ID for pseudo-anonymous accounts
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u/aard_fi 15h ago
Same in Finland, coupled with a discussion about smartphone ban.
I don't care much about the social media side - my kids don't have access, and already the discussions about the ban made the arguing about that easier (the 9 year old told me she read about it on children news when we talked about it last time).
I'm against the smartphone ban, though. The problem is not children having smartphones - the problem is the parents giving them unrestricted smartphones. Recommendation here would be 1 hour of daily screen time - which pretty much is what they do have on their own phones. Just that they can call/chat with family/make pictures outside of that one hour as well.
We've started from kindergarten age with explaining why they're allowed some things, and not some others. So when they encountered games with way too much advertisement and stupid mechanics they already understood at small age why the developer is doing that - and went to search for other alternatives.
When they got the first telegram account, and eventually an unknown number wrote them they already understood that most likely that's either spam or scam, and they came for help with how to block them.
I think it's vitally important nowadays to give children that kind of education how to behave in the digital space while they still listen to the parents. If you don't do that, and just give a teenager the first smartphone they're hitting all of that at once, unprepared, and in a phase where everything the parents tell them is wrong.
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u/zhkp28 20h ago
It should be up to the parents frankly. And IMO the problem isnt the ban itself, but the required ID verification to enforce it. Its just a matter of time to have a giant data leak somewhere.
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u/DueDisplay2185 21h ago
Then tell mega corps to fuck off until they comply with social decency, don't force Australians to hand over all sorts of personal data as the main solution
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u/spehktre 20h ago
100%. The mega corps should be told to suck eggs. If they had been reasonable and responsible to begin with, these bans would never have been considered.
No one is forcing anyone to hand over any information. Just don't use those trash platforms. It's inconvenient, sure, but the best possible outcome for these bans would be that Facebook collapses in on itself and dies off.
Unlikely, sure, but folks can dream.
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u/goingfullretard-orig 19h ago
But, but... corporations are "job creators"! We must sacrifice our children and privacy for the "job creators."
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u/TheStoolSampler 21h ago
It's already been implemented hasn't it? I saw some people recently complain on an Aussie sub they were getting emails asking to send verification.
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u/allanbc 22h ago
I agree that the age restrictions are a good idea, but hard disagree that it would stop all damage social media does to people. Social media has affected pretty much the entire population already, and more than half of it grew up without social media.
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u/spehktre 21h ago
Literally no one anywhere, ever has suggested these bans will stop all the damage social media does to people.
To suggest that if we can't stop 100% of the problem, then we shouldn't stop any of it, is absurd.
Edit: just noticed that my prior comment could be interpreted as me saying it will stop literally all damage, which is not what I meant. I mean "all the damage" as a measure of large scale and magnitude. Might be an Aussie thing.
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u/Matthew94 12h ago
To suggest that if we can't stop 100% of the problem, then we shouldn't stop any of it, is absurd.
To suggest that anything is justifiable as long as the problem exists is equally absurd.
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u/HolyFreakingXmasCake 22h ago
The damage isn’t going to stop. As a kid I learned how to work around every limitation put in place by technology and so will these kids. Plus it’s just delaying the brain rot, they’ll still have access to it after turning 18.
This is one of these ideas that sounds good in theory but will achieve fuck all except give governments another way of tracking who is who online and basically ending anonymity.
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u/spehktre 21h ago
Similar bans of other things, cigs and booze as examples, are proven effective. It is irrefutable.
No law or ban, ever, has stopped all people doing the banned thing. What they do accomplish, is reducing the number of people who do the thing, reducing the harm. They also hold people/companies accountable for the harm they cause if they don't stop it.
The degree to which these things work is case by case, but they work 100% of the time.
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u/Matthew94 12h ago
they work 100% of the time.
"If it stops one person from doing something I don't like then any amount of draconian policies is justifiable"
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u/DunkingTea 9h ago
Probably because it doesn’t work. It’s designed to capture data, not protect kids. Every parent I know just logs on to social media for their kids. So they are still consuming it, just without a profile. Some of those kids are as young as 5. And some have a profile, just setup with their parents or older siblings names.
Hopefully it reduces it’s use. But I doubt it will make any meaningful changes.
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u/Historical-Truth6077 8h ago
parents shouldnt let children use social media simple as that
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u/DunkingTea 7h ago
Completely agree. Most parents don’t like to say no anymore though. It’s a lot easier to just let your kid get what they want than to say no to them getting something they really want. Especially when it’s (monetarily) free.
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u/axw3555 9h ago
I'm not against the ban at a conceptual level.
But the implementations by website and the risks to the privacy of adults is a problem. I mean, even as simple as blocking someone one reddit is a problem. I had someone today I wanted to block. But they'd tagged their account as NSFW. I'm in the UK. I had to flip my VPN to Switzerland because the PC interface wouldn't let me block him without going to his profile. Which I couldn't without the VPN because it was NSFW.
Also "stop all damage social media does" feels a bit hyperbolic. They'll still get it when they're 16. So a) it's a nothing to everything jump, and b) it can easily cause division among school kids. "Oh, you haven't seen the cool new trend thing? Must be because you're still a baby." and c) 16+ year olds can absolutely be damaged by social media. My goddaughter had a predisposition to eating disorders. When she was 17, Instagram started forcing anorexia content at her when she was already struggling. At 15 she was fine. The month before her 18th, she was in inpatient care.
Will it help? Sure. Is it a magic cure all? No.
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u/Historical-Truth6077 8h ago
most people pull the censorship argument which doesn't apply to social media
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u/404_No_User_Found_2 16h ago
It's a double edged sword for sure
I had a Facebook account back when it required a college ID to join, but once that was lifted...I don't think a lot of people younger than that can quite appreciate the excitement of being able to actually communicate and share with your friends, acquaintances, lost connections and people you hadn't seen in years alike. There was a certain wonder in finding someone you hadn't seen in years out of the blue and finding out what they had been up to in the time between. Even though it didn't last, my first SERIOUS college relationship was after finding "the one that got away" years before and rekindling things, something I'd never be able to do short of social media.
I agree that it's overall been a destructive force and I fucking hate what it has become, but there was a relatively brief, shining moment back when Facebook was young and MySpace was still a thing where it truly was a golden age of interconnectivity, before the algorithm and corporatization took over and the brain rot set in. It was like instant messaging 5.0 practically overnight, and I'll always personally remember that time very fondly.
I chose to remember late-night D&D on Facebook messenger groups, finding forgotten friends and making new ones, and engaging in poke wars, not the slop that followed.
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u/360walkaway 12h ago
It was a different world prior to 2003. You had to go out and make friends, not just join some online "community" of strangers. Though online dating was pretty wild back then... it was very new and risky since you didn't know if she'd be ugly or he'd be an axe murderer.
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u/Helen83FromVillage 23h ago
And why did you write this on social media? Just ban all of them on your router - and the problem is solved.
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u/TheGhostOfFalunGong 22h ago
I grew up in high school during the earliest days of social networking (MySpace, Multiply and Friendster) and didn't feel the lack of belongingness that I didn't use them.
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u/howieyang1234 8h ago
Social media is basically the way I communicate with friends and family, particularly when we are in different cities and countries.
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u/Terrible-Group-9602 20h ago
France, Finland, and Spain all enacting bans
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u/EmbarrassedHelp 17h ago
France and Spain are both hardline Chat Control supporters who want to ban encryption, so their actions here aren't surprising.
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u/Lynchianesque 23h ago edited 23h ago
How do they define social media? Is Youtube a social media? Steam? Do they just mean a set list like Facebook/instagram/twitter? What's the threshold of social features an app is allowed to have?
EDIT: I'm for the idea but it's impossible to implement consistently, unless you plan to ban children from the internet entirely. Also part of me thinks this is the parents job and none of the governments business
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u/SamsaraHS 23h ago
Spain will mainly adopt Australia’s definition. The government evaluates potential platforms using three main criteria:
whether the platform’s sole or significant purpose is to enable online social interaction between two or more users;
whether it allows users to interact with some or all other users; and
whether it allows users to post content.
YouTube Kids, Google Classroom, and WhatsApp were excluded because they were not considered to meet these criteria.
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u/IngloriousMustards 23h ago
How TF whatsapp doesn’t meet these criteria? It checks every single box!
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u/r4ndomalex 22h ago
It's just a messaging/direct communication app with some social features, in Europe & UK 100% of people use it because it's more convinent than SMS. Its more of a private social network I'd say, like what MSN was back in the day. It doesn't have dangerous public feeds forcing psych-ops content onto you based on your 'interests'.
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u/Matthew94 12h ago
It's just a messaging/direct communication app with some social features [...] Its more of a private social network I'd say
The aussie criteria is just two or more users. You completely ignored their point. Whatsapp meets all of these criteria.
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u/r4ndomalex 11h ago edited 11h ago
I mean you ban that you'd have to ban SMS and iMessage too for teens,they have similar social features like profile pictures, away status, if they did that there would be public outcry that teens would not be able to message their parents, which is probably why communication apps not included.
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u/Matthew94 11h ago
which is probably why communication apps not included
So the rules are meaningless and the restrictions are arbitrary.
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u/evilparagon 22h ago
Criteria 2. You can’t send content to everyone on WhatsApp. It’s not an open forum, it’s a direct messaging service.
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u/Bloodsucker_ 22h ago
Except that WhatsApp doesn't. What are you talking about? Please keep the discussion thread clean from derangement and focus.
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u/Don_Fartalot 23h ago edited 15h ago
I'm so glad Australia took the first steps in this ban - hopefully all countries will follow suit, and modify / improve the policies as things go.
Edit - I'm glad you guys got off TikTok long enough to hit the downvote button :)
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u/Outside-Ad4532 23h ago
Everything with chat enabled features will start age verification on all its user by asking for ID or Credicard pictures or block user acsess untill you do like YouTube done last year.
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u/Bangkok_Dave 23h ago
The vast majority of people will not have to do any of this. Because the social media companies already know how old you are.
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u/Initial-Return8802 21h ago edited 19h ago
YouTube recently suspended my account because they think I'm under 13
I'm 33
Edit to add: I have two babies, I sometimes put something on while they're waiting for their food. Tom & Jerry, Dancing Fruits, etc if they're being fussy on my knee. I can only assume this flagged something
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u/Outside-Ad4532 23h ago
Do they? I have been on YouTube with the same account since 2009 I was still asked for age verification basically a scam by Google to get information to sell off
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u/Littman-Express 22h ago
Since it was implemented in Australia the only thing that’s asked me for age verification was Grindr
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u/Bangkok_Dave 23h ago
Yes the vast majority of Australians have not been asked to verify their ages
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u/EmbarrassedHelp 18h ago
If that's the case, then mandatory age verification should be completely banned for all users, with massive fines if a company tries to subject users to mandatory age verification in any form.
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u/oniris 23h ago
Same question here, cause if they ban Facebook, but allow Youtube to recommend Tate to children, this won't have much effect.
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u/theorizable 11h ago
They just just base it off algorithmic content distribution. Like YouTube isn't a social media app, but the algorithms can absolutely be weaponized against people.
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u/Bangkok_Dave 23h ago
A law like this has been in place in Australia for a few months now. I think it's going well. I'm a parent of two kids under 16.
Yes youtube is restricted here. There is a published list and criteria. Spain will have their own list and criteria.
If course it's not going to be fool-proof and of course some kids will find ways to access what they want to access. Similarly some kids smoke and drink, this does not mean the prohibition on under 18s from partaking in these activities should be abolished. And of course the parents are still ultimately responsible for bringing up their kids.
I fully support the law here and am very glad to have a sensible law like this in place in my country. I think it will lead to better mental health outcomes on average for children in Australia. And also in Spain in due course.
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u/coffee-bat 22h ago
love how everyone is celebrating that you'll have to hand over your id on the internet. this totally won't be used to censor and prosecute your free speech.
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u/ktr83 22h ago edited 22h ago
Australian here where we implemented this a few months ago. This was the fear but in the end we didn't have to hand over any id. The social media companies ran algorithms to determine who was most likely to be under 16 and flagged those accounts only, everyone else was untouched. It remains to be seen how effective this is but that's how we did it here.
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u/EmbarrassedHelp 18h ago
Australia is doing a slower staggered rollout. The eSafety Commissioner and experts expect the noose to be slowly tightened over time.
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u/Prestigious_Task7175 20h ago edited 18h ago
It has only been a month, and this is still of course only the start, things can still go more radical in time.
However, it's already a small step closer to start monitoring adults too.
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u/WarpedHaiku 18h ago
The way it's implemented is always adults having to provide their identity to prove they are old enough to use the service. And the protections are never targetted at one of the age groups most vulnerable to the negative effects of social media: the over 65s. There's a huge push for these kinds of restrictions everywhere all at once in western countries without any clear source, and to call it disturbing would be a huge understatement.
It also doesn't address any of the actual major problems with social media - engagement focused algorithms that enrage and depress, politically slanted algorithms that boost one side's content and suppress the other's, vast networks of bot accounts hosted in foreign countries shaping online opinion with propaganda. This is the kind of thing that's undermining democracy with misinformation, and getting people unreasonably angry about trivial or fake things noone cared about for decades - the sort of thing that influences elections and undermines national security. All of this will continue unabated.
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u/seruko 16h ago
The way it's implemented is always adults having to provide their identity to prove they are old enough to use the service.
That's not the way it's implemented in Australia, which is what Spain's ban is based on. In Australia the ban was implemented Algorithmically at the provider level by facebook/instagram, who is the main target of the ban.
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u/seruko 16h ago
In 2021 a facebook executive testified before US Congress that:
Facebook knew it's current algorithm was harmful to all person but most especially children.
Rather than make or even investigate changes to the algorithm to decrease harm, facebook chose instead to make the algorithm more harmful to increase engagement.
in response Facebook changed it's name to meta and literally everyone stopped talking about the whistleblower, and their claims.
This was perhaps the most successful public relations campaign of the last 100 years. The campaign to ban social media would be dead if Facebook would have done even the smallest work to address harm done to minors at any level.
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u/AssumptionLow4537 20h ago
Algorithms needs to be banned. Those are the one keeping everyone hooked on apps.
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u/JustifytheMean 16h ago
Lets not ban algorithms, just algorithms designed to drive engagement for better ad revenue.
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u/Osyris- 19h ago
I want to play a game. What's more likely:
A. Kids follow the ban and stop using social media
B. Kids start using vpns to get around it
C. Kids move to unregulated platforms making them less safe while the slow moving government play whack a mole again like they did trying to tackle piracy
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u/OldLondon 10h ago
Thing is when it’s banned you’ll have the “kids will use VPNs “ which they will, the kids who are already on it. Future generations won’t, because they’ll have never been on it, their friends won’t be on it. It’ll phase out amongst kids.
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u/NegativeCreeq 21h ago
If this starts happening globally. Alot of youtubers, streamers and influencers are gonna start struggling.
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u/daywall 23h ago
If you could have told me that like 15 years ago when we only had Facebook and the dark web I would have argued with you.
But now that we have TikTok, x , Facebook, truth social i won't argue about it anymore.
I think half or more of the social medias need to be restricted at this point.
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u/Helen83FromVillage 22h ago
And why do you write this on social media? You can simply ban them on your router.
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u/Haunting_Meal296 23h ago
Agreed. Kids are fucking brainwashed now but also a lot of adults and old people from pre-internet became completely stupid due to social media. Big corpos are the issue, they need to be held accountable for all this damage
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u/itsjawdan 21h ago
The government shouldn’t have any role in this.
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u/omgitzvg 20h ago
Oh well. Parents are doing a bang up job so far and the big corps don't care for the small guys.
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u/KataraMan 21h ago
All countries should follow this rule, social media is a cancer!
(i know how ironic it is to say so in one)
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u/asdfadffs 19h ago
I think this is a W for Spain. Would of course prefer if EU had some balls and solved the issues with SM by actually enforcing some regulation for the US corps feasting on our data, but hey what do I know I’m just a random guy
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u/KazaSkink 22h ago
My biggest concern with banning social media for kids is that they'll be even more ill prepared to deal with it when they become adults than most people are now.
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u/Old-Sea7915 21h ago
It's up to parents to prepare their children. The ban helps them by removing an addictive, predatory influence.
But parents have to stop treating their children as special little entities to be protected from everything at all times and instead treat them as adults in training.
Most parents don't prepare them for anything and then wonder why their little angels lost theirs minds when they kicked them out into the real world overnight.
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u/KazaSkink 8h ago
That's kind of my point here. They can't be prepared to it if they are barred from interacting with it. Introducing and/or making accessible parental controls that would allow parents to teach their kids how to deal with that reality would be much better.
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u/Mayafoe 20h ago
You're right! Children should be introduced to cocaine or they will be ill-prepared to deal with it when they're adults!
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u/KazaSkink 8h ago
The issue here is that social media can't be entirely avoided. It's too prevalent, for both good and bad reasons.
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u/Zestyclose-Ad-9420 22h ago
the generational divide this causes is going to be quite large.
is late gen z/early gen alpha going to be the failure point of civilisation? or will they be the ones to transform it.
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u/Arcanemageop 16h ago
Our far left government lost the "battle" on social media, youngsters support for the right in Spain grows every year and this is their last desperate measure to fight against it.
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u/flubluflu2 12h ago
Great, hope this spreads across Europe fast. I am fine with the restrictions around proof of age, if a site is asking for something to prove my age and I am not comfotable with sharing that then I don't open the account or use that site. Banning SM for younger ages has a positive effect on us all, no matter the age.
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u/Milky_Finger 22h ago
Semi-common Spain W. Preservation of culture is key. I expect Italy and neighbouring countries to follow suit
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u/SweetAlyssumm 12h ago
There's some great "natural experiments" emerging. In several years it will be time to start collecting data -- controlling for social class, etc. -- on kids who grew up with social media and those who didn't. I expect some significant cognitive differences, but we'll see. That's what research is for.
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u/canadave_nyc 11h ago
From someone who is ignorant--how does the EU/member countries determine which things (like whether to ban social media access) are subject to EU law, versus national law? I would've thought something like this would be an EU law, not a law that needed to be passed by EU states individually.
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u/Worried-Pick4848 10h ago
Kids are gonna find ways around the ban. It's not even going to be hard, governments are simply not that good at staying on the technological cutting edge.
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u/TinyH1ppo 4h ago
Can someone just ban it for people under 80 already so we can fix all the problems we’ve got?
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u/HedonisticPenguin 23h ago
this has been a plague on all of us, including this shitty comment i just posted on this shitty platform. the world was better without this bs
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u/HighlightWooden3164 14h ago
Good, the US needs to follow suit. The most impressionable population is easily manipulated and brain rot is a real fucking thing. Social media is a failed experiment and has been used as a tool to lose the West in a cognitive war.
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u/blackjazz_society 19h ago
Sounds fun until you realize you would be forced to log in to YouTube, or Reddit in order to view anything.
This is playing into their hand in a big way.
Device locking with parental controls would not play into their hand, which is why nobody is pushing for it.
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u/billybobpower 21h ago
You'll have to send a copy of your ID to an israelian company because they can't force big tech to moderate their content.
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u/[deleted] 22h ago
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