By now, there’s a mountain of evidence that social media—not to mention, like, the internet in general—is not particularly good for children. With an iPhone, the average teenager has access to every terrible thing on the web that adults do, but none of the emotional maturity to handle it. Teens now spend hours on their phones every single day, and, despite the fact that many teens say social media is bad for them, they can’t seem to pry themselves loose from it.
And the problems linked to social media? Social and psychological maladies galore, increased anxiety and depression, etc, etc, etc.
In the U.S., states are kinda sorta catching up to this fact and, in lieu of any federal action, producing their own regulatory restrictions on teen digital access. In other countries, governments have been a little bit more proactive. Indeed, Denmark has decided to take the most efficient route to protecting young users and decided to just ban them from using social media altogether.
Yes, the Associated Press notes that Denmark’s Minister for Digital Affairs, Caroline Stage, has announced a ban on social media access for children under the age of 15. Australia is in the process of launching a similar effort.
“The amount of time they spend online — the amount of violence, self-harm that they are exposed to online — is simply too great a risk for our children,” Stage told the AP. Stage said that the Big Tech companies “have an absurd amount of money available, but they’re simply not willing to invest in the safety of our children, invest in the safety of all of us.”
Stage said that the ban would not take effect immediately, but would likely come together at some point in the next several months. “I can assure you that Denmark will hurry, but we won’t do it too quickly because we need to make sure that the regulation is right and that there is no loopholes for the tech giants to go through,” the official told the AP.
From the available information, it’s a little unclear exactly how such a ban would be enforced. Stage said that Denmark plans to create an official age-verification app, so presumably such an app might be part of the process.
Regulating tech has always been difficult, since it moves so fast and regulatory bodies notoriously move so slow. As governments move to finally inhibit the harms of social media, AI is busy getting accused of causing an assortment of new social harms.
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