Britain plots digital bedtime after kicking under-16s off social media The UK government is preparing to kick under-16s off social media and clamp down on a range of online features aimed at children, declaring that Big Tech has had its chance to police itself and failed. Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced plans on Monday to ban under-16s from social media as part of a package that also includes …
I may be a pessimist, but I'm getting worried that age gating is becoming a global trend. It's possibly not long before a plurality of countries enforce this kind of crap, leading to age verification becoming the default for online services, regardless of the user's location. VPNs also won't do much for the incoming restrictions enforced at the device level (see "sensitive content" scanning), and jailbreaking/rooting is becoming depressingly difficult for most mobile hardware these days.
It looks like the government want Google & Apple to do an age check when you set up a new phone. Plus there are possible restrictions on VPNs being mentioned in the Guardian & the Times. It might be time we all have to admit that we have effectively lost the internet & it's never coming back like it was.
Apple are already doing this in iOS 26.5.
In my opinion, they took a very pragmatic approach. Their first check is to see how long you’ve had an Apple ID, then infer from that whether you are likely to be over 18.
In my case it sailed through and there were no further demands for any kind of real world ID.
I presume Google can do the same, and I’ve had the associated Google account longer than the Apple ID, but my business Android phone stopped taking updates ages ago.
we have effectively lost the internet....
You have made the mistake of confusing the Internet with social media. They are not the same. The Internet still does what it's always done. It will still be doing that long after the social media cesspits have disappeared up their own arse.
> You have made the mistake of confusing the Internet with social media.
For now.
Step by little step Governments are following the 1984 handbook and eventually you* will have to log onto the Internet with your Government Issued Digital ID card to be allowed access.
* it will be a while and I will long be 6 feet under by then hopefully.
The Australian kids I spoke to explained politely that they already had VPNs to Turkey because subscriptions to Netflix were cheaper there. No need for a new one.
"including overnight social media curfews" - perhaps like the ones the South Koreans had for years but have now abandoned. But then attitudes to public services there are different, with a digital fire brigade: help my computer is on fire - let us access remotely to fix it... The idea of using cohort instead of date of birth was really helpful for schools as everyone in grade x got the same.
(And isn't there going to be a pre-MMIX crtificate soon: born before 2009 so you can buy tobacco products?)
Everyone in the UK should see this for what it is: forcing every UK person to identify themselves before using the Internet to prove that they are over 16.
Once again, "Won't someone think of the children!?" turns out to be the reliable excuse for the government to expand its panopticon.
It's horrible.
It's no bad thing limiting/banning kids from social media sites when the sites themselves have shown no effort to curb the stuff that's shown to them. The content on there is scary, seemingly in great abundance, and as everyone is operating in their own little echo chambers it just reinforces skewed views on the world around them. Can we expand the ban to all ages? No doubt it would be for the complete betterment of society if that happened. Only places you could then get your news is the Daily Fail or The S*n. Oh, yeah that's not all that great really.
What worries me, and I can see this in the offing, is that it's going to be used as yet another example of great British law being made a fool of from encryption in the form of VPNs. Plenty of people seem to think you can't ban VPNs from use in the UK. And I think there is a reason to believe that. But I also believe we're heading to a situation where you'll have to have a license for it's use. The license then allows corporations to use it, but it makes it harder for the country + their dog to get on them. ISPs can then, fairly easily, note encrypted traffic on their network and where it comes from, see if that residence have a license, and flat out block the traffic. You're not banning the VPN, you're putting it behind a lock and key.
That is the worry for me, and I think it'll be realised fairly soon.
> ISPs can then, fairly easily, note encrypted traffic on their network and where it comes from, see if that residence have a license, and flat out block the traffic. You're not banning the VPN, you're putting it behind a lock and key.
Don't give them any ideas!
But, fortunately, I don't think that's very feasible - encrypted (HTTPS) traffic is the norm these days, and a VPN could easily be tunneled over HTTPS
When a pervert exposes himself in a children's playground, you don't close the playground to children. You arrest the pervert.
This policy is an excuse to police the people while ignoring the companies responsible for the damage.
Your right as they wouldn't want to upset the techbros.
I mean Google and MS wouldn't give them kick backs on the licenses that save 20p and Oracle would ensure upgrades go worse than usual.
Blame the victim not the enablers of the abusers.
Well, things have changed.
Yes, you are correct, first arrest the pervert. Next, suggest that there are perverts everywhere. Then, create a system that limits any non-pupils from entering the playground, and surrounding streets, except if pre-registered. Then realise that anyone helping with extra-curricular education is barred too, unless they jump through many hoops. It's ok though, everyone is now convinced that the perverts are everywhere and this is all a price worth paying. Meanwhile, the pervert has now been released (if things got far enough to lock them up) and has no plans on sticking to the laws forced on everyone else. It's not as though there will be resources for enforcement.
Cynical, moi?
There's a theory (as I don't have that article to hand) that it's also to push digital ID's.
The age verification stuff doesn't work all that well: Under 18's are verified as adults, and adults (such as myself, who is by no means 'young') have verification rejected (required for some of my volunteering roles, which makes it a real PITA!) so the answer looks to be a central ID that can be used to verify a person's age, and to me (and this theory) that's not a coincidence.
Oh, and again: There's one specific type of person who 'thinks of the children' who shouldn't be doing so. Makes you wonder if any politicians are that kind of person (answer: Some of them have been caught with inappropriate images of kids on their devices... but they had an excuse and only got a slapped wrist, so that's okay, right?). Not saying all politicians, but it does seem like some think too much of children and not enough about their actual responsibilities to the public as a whole. Or... you know... use children as an excuse...
Like the Tories or Reform or Restore have not jumped on this before lol.
Take the political party ball with you as you leave. It's partisan they would all sell the data to whoever they are in bed with plantir. Tech bros you name.
It's the comfy do sod all paid silly money politics and backhanders and the family values that goes as far back as Thatcher.
This comes across as wilfully naive and partisan statement. What are you suggesting as an alternative: everyone-for-themselves-no-rules-chaos-and-to-hell-with-the consequences? No?
So, you want SOME rules. Who gets to set the rules? Oh, yes, it's these things called 'elected politicians'.
Do we all agree on what the rules are, and how they are applied? Do we heck.
Does it make a lot of difference what the party colours are when it comes to all being agreed about the rules? Not really.
A working 'democracy' is a noisy argumentative one, with strong accountability and good transparency.
A dysfunctional 'democracy' is complacent and passive, with weak accountability and little transparency.
Which we get is largely down to the 'demos'—the people.
Blaming the colour of the party in power is a mug's game, or a sign of someone wanting a cheap scapegoat.
Lots of false dichotomies there. The choice is not between rules and no rules, it's about number of rules. Labour wants rules for everything and to hell with any personal responsibility. Remember that Tony Blair's government's doubled the number of pages of statute law ... and still didn't give us heaven on earth.
No, you're basically just saying "I want the rules that I want; not the rules they want". We can all say that, and it gets us nowhere.
Labour/Conservative/Reform/MonsterRavingLoony/... they're all just human beings. Pick your poison - because they are ALL poisonous in their own ways, including the person looking at you in the mirror.
It might help if more of us we're willing to: a. take responsibility for our actions and the impact they have on others, and b. actually make an effort to work with others to look after each other.
Grandstanding and holier than thou criticism may briefly make us feel superior, but doesn't actually get us anywhere useful.
I'm interested that you say it's partisan, because that post doesn't say the Tories would be better.
When I see Labour making a policy like this I'm disappointed because somewhere in my heart I feel as though - in spite of all the evidence of the last quarter-century - they should be smart enough to do better. When the Tories make a policy like this I'm unsurprised because they are witless mooncalves, their eyes rolling independently, tongues lolling from froth-laden lips as they reach for the closest source of lobbyist cash. They are incapable of anything but base reaction, creatures of reflex and response, like slugs or flatworms, so I don't expect anything positive from them, although I'd take their crude and mindless drives over Reform's wilful push towards malice any day.
But sometimes historically Labour have shown a spark of trying to think a policy through, even if this government has been relentlessly disappointing in that regard. This might be how it feels to be a teacher seeing a student squander their potential because they're more interested in following peer pressure than becoming a worthwhile person.
It is just Orwell, plain and simple. They had ISP blocks and didn't need the OSA. They could ban kids owning smartphones, which would remove the onus from parents, making it easier for them to just say no. And they could establish a watershed time, as they do with TV. They are just going the full Stasi. It's what zombie Starmer and his one term Labour failures will be hated for and remembered for. The civil rights lawyer who took our civil rights away. As bad as Boris and Liz were, and as bad as Nigel will be.
If "identify before using the internet" were the aim, solutions already existed before all this age verification rubbish. Mobile networks were forced to filter web traffic already unless users did a one-time ID check, which was done by the mobile network itself rather than outsourced. For home connections, there's barely any need in the first place. Kids aren't going to be signing up for a home connection themselves, and the owner of the connection are responsible for its use by anyone in the house. But in a pinch, existing methods like the ISP doing a one-time check on the connection owner's ID should have sufficed.
This is "identify for every single service on the web", a much more unwieldy concept designed specifically to get people used to forced identity checks and prop up the digital ID proposals plans whether people want it or not, by making every other option either illegal or too much hassle for the average person. Not a single person would want a car that demanded you connect and verify online a digital driving licence for every place you want to drive to, yet it's fine for general purpose computers?
Don't assume Bad Enoch, whoever leads the Lib/Dems, and Farrago, wouldn't jump on this bandwaggon.
It's all about control.
The currently three major parties, plus the even more lunatic fringe, are signed up to Neoliberalism, beholden to the City of London, staunch supporters of the WEF, and approve the message from the Ayn Rand Foundation. Differences between them are paper thin. Labour mumbles a few 'Old Labour' mantras, the Conservatives act similarly, the Lib/Dems remain puzzled as to which policies would give them an edge. Farrago has as much personal charm as Yaxley-Lennon, and each adds outspoken animosity towards immigrants to the basic Neoliberal agenda.
So let's repeal all those laws, eh? Let's let our kids do all those things without restriction!
I caught Starmer's speech (as the BBC covered it as if it was a declaration of war - which maybe it is) and Starmer addressed this point as "ridiculous". He also says laws are "...an expression of our values"; the rules are what he thinks kids ought to be doing, even if they are not.
"How do you plan enforcing that one?"
Why is parentng to be enforced at all? Some parents are better than others and as adults we grow up and move past what our parents taught us. That's life.
Do you think killing anonymity on the web for everyone will be any sort of answer? Kids will get around it as they took minutes to do in Australia. This solves nothing except the Government's fetish for control.
It’s relatively simple.
- Establish standards that ensure parental controls are easy to use (assuming this is even needed)
- Educate parents in their use
- If all else fails, make it an offence to provide a minor with a device and/or access to the internet without parental controls and filters in place.
A few test cases would focus the mind.
It also solves the peer pressure issue. Very few children wouldn’t find “I can’t, Daddy will go to prison” a compelling argument.
1) From what I've read over the weekend, 16 and 17 years olds can use credit cards to "prove their ID" - except they are not allowed to hold them.
2) My 16 year old is currently sitting her GCSE's. A lot of them use revision content on YouTube - which they will not be able to access after 20:30, so that will curtail her ability to study.
3) 16 year olds are to be given the vote, but cannot be trusted when to stop viewing "social media"?
@Aladdin Sane
I don't understand the downvotes on that - as someone who was youngest in my year group at school (so e.g. doing GCSE exams aged 15, whilst most others were 16) there is an issue that school year group cohorts cover quite a range.
e.g. for many UK areas for staring in September 2026 the cohort is birthday 1 September 2021 to 31 August 2022, so the youngest child can be almost a year younger than the oldest child
Social control mechanisms aren't about logic or reason. They are an attempt by patricians to control and delimit the plebes. It has thus ever been so. The only difference, is that our contemporary world might have actually created a mechanism that is successful at it.
16 year olds are to be given the vote, but cannot be trusted when to stop viewing "social media"?
Weren't Australian teenagers reported to be trolling the government and the PM specifically on social media right after the ban with "I am still here, just waiting till I can vote"?
Do these politicians not realise that the teens they are about to inconvenience and royally piss off today will be the first time voters with whom they will be pleading for their jobs in a few months?
Of course, Starmer is unlikely to still be PM by then - he'll be lucky to see out the summer - so he doesn't give a shit.
This is Draconian, unnecessary and unenforceable. The sheer stupidity of it buggers the mind. YouTube, for example, contains vast quantities of useful tutorials in amongst the dross. No thought for the kids studying, say, music, who find theory tutorials useful, or those struggling with maths homework who look up the appropriate method on YouTube.
I know of at least one young teen who makes some nice pocket money by setting up YouTube channels and Facebook pages for wrinkles with small businesses - she isn't going to be pleased! Nor is the lad with the popular and monetized tiktok account. Back to delivering newspapers for them, then, except those jobs have long been extinct.
Of course, it's going to be much harder for teens to organise and make their feelings known without access to social media - that wouldn't be part of the plan, by any chance?
Wouldn't it be nice if, just got once, we could elect some politicians who aren't self serving assholes?
"But maybe keeping them from viewing the dross on social media, they now won't vote for Reform when they're old enough"
Unfortunately, people are allowed to vote for people and parties that you (and I) despise. It's called democracy. Equally, those parties are allowed to present their arguments, no matter how barmy they may be. See Corbyn, monster raving loonies, sky fairy influenced parties etc. This, too, is democracy, and the onus is on the other parties/ candidates to adequately debunk the bullshit.
If you are seriously suggesting that elements of society should be prevented from expressing their position, and that others be actively prevented from hearing it, then I don't think you have adequately understood the concepts of free speech or democracy. Whittling away at those freedoms, even with seemingly good internet, is the surest way to destroy then forever. It's a slippery slope, and I fear we're already on it.
What makes you think that? There are plenty of things that would still cover the message from Reform or any other party on which young people can still freely view them. Also, if Reform can make the point that they're the ones who weren't in power when your devices started recording you every time you want to access a site, that could boost their electoral support among the young. This is also only relevant to the youngest section of voters, because after their first election, they'll have had plenty of time to see everything social media has to offer because the regulations only block and identify children but do nothing about abuses of the platforms that affect adults. This is not the problem the regulation is trying to solve, it will not be solved by it anyway, and if you want to solve it, you will have a very hard time doing it at all, let alone without serious consequences on civil liberties.
There’s a flaw in your nice tidy theory, and it’s the one that big tech are using to counter the argument for this ban. (Stopped clocks etc.)
Where do you think the kids are going to congregate online when the big, regulated platforms are out of reach?
Yes, you got it. Unregulated platforms run by the very same bad actors that we’d rather they avoid.
I suspect even Mr Yaxley Lennon or whatever his name is has also worked that out.
This isn't about teens. To prove you're over 16 you will need to sign on with your new government approved, Palantir operated, secure ID token linked to your government Not-An-ID-Card.
That way we can watch out for terrorists (warning browsing who the government regards as a terrorist today makes you a terrorist) and your browsing is much more valuable to advertisers
I disagree, because I think that skilled professionals in any field can make things better, but we are currently operating in a media/information and party-political environment that makes it very hard for people who are interested in politics-as-service, and far too easy for people who see politics as an opportunity to further their own interests or ego.
I don't know how we fix that, but it's not the concept of politicians that causes the problem, it is the systems that consistently open the door and invite the worst people around to become politicians, while closing down the opportunities for anyone who might want to make our lives better to access the levers of power.
"I don't know how we fix that"
A start would be for all the people like the OP to stand for election so that we will have someone of their obvious principled outlook to vote for. I appreciate it's much harder work than being onlookers decrying the motives of everyone in politics but it's the obvious step that they would take if they felt so strongly about it.
@Doctor Syntax
In the UK you cannot be an MP if you have certain principles e.g. you have to swear allegiance to the king / crown.
.. and anyone who says, "oh it's just meaningless words" obviously does not have deep republican views
Ludicrous that there is no way to just declare your belief to do the best for the UK - supporting the crown is not equivalent to supporting the UK but the oath treats it as if it is..
Thus, we currently have a total sham of democracy in the UK, as by law any principled republican (i.e. one who refuses to swear the crown allegiance) cannot be an MP.
> I don't know how we fix that,...
Me neither. However, it seems to me that we need to find a way to reintroduce nuance to discussions. Very few things are clear. Politics is the art of operating in the grey areas to get consensus. Unfortunately, reporting and online discussions only seem to allow for black and white. It now needs to be a soundbite - not a considered, balanced argument.
For example, when this policy was announced, where was the information explaining the balance between protecting children with the other factors, such as concerns about backdoor ID (you can't exclude a group without checking everyone), or difficulties of enforcement?
I don't know how we get there either but I'm encouraged that the comments section on The Reg is often a better discussion.
“ Of course, Starmer is unlikely to still be PM by then - he'll be lucky to see out the summer - so he doesn't give a shit.”
Yes, that’s one of the big disappointments. In some ways I’d love him to still be around when it turns out that this is all a farce, and more people start to realise that.
See also his statements along the lines of “Isn’t AI brilliant! We should invest in that…”
According to the AU e·safety commissioner 70% of under 16s still had social media accounts "why teens say social media ban isn't working for under 16s."
As political theatre this exercise in futility was a success. As a harm reduction measure — a bit of a damp squib which when I think of it, pretty much sums up Starmer's premiership.
I suspect the eventual response will be along the lines of “look, we did what we could and the nasty platforms are still letting kids get around it.”
Cue even more draconian measures.
The only reason why I don’t think this is a deliberate strategy is that I never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.
Let's not pretend this is mainly about children. Digital ID has been the answer in search of a question for years. The government has simply found the one pretext you can't argue with: object, and you're soft on child safety. That's why this hill, and not another.
Follow the money. The Tony Blair Institute, Britain's loudest advocate for mandatory Digital ID, has taken north of £250 million from Larry Ellison, whose firm Oracle holds over a billion in UK public sector contracts and sells exactly the backend a national ID scheme would run on. No conflict, they say. The think tank pushing the policy is bankrolled by the man who'd build the plumbing, and Whitehall treats its papers as neutral advice.
The "age assurance" framing buys cover. Ofcom permits facial age estimation, which supposedly guesses your age without learning your name. A camera measuring your face to sort you into a category, an idea with a long and unlovely pedigree running from the skull-calipers of the last century to the cloud, and defeated in this very article by a teenager with a drawn-on moustache. And the "we delete it instantly, trust us" line? Spain fined Yoti, the gold-standard vendor, the better part of a million euros in March for mishandling biometric data. The promise is worth whatever the enforcement behind it is, which is nothing much.
Estimation is the thin end, by design. Faced with ruinous fines, platforms default to hard checks, credit cards, open banking, documents. Then a minister points out how wasteful it is for everyone to build their own, and offers the fix that was always in the drawer: one government credential to verify you everywhere. And it won't be a card in your wallet. It'll be an app on the phone in your pocket, the one with the mic, camera and GPS, one mandatory update from logging where you go and one emergency from being the thing you produce before you're allowed to speak. You needn't think today's ministers are villains. Permissions don't roll back, and governments change.
Meanwhile the algorithms driving the actual harm sail on untouched. The friction lands on you. A determined fifteen-year-old will route around all of it in an afternoon. The rest of us are being talked into installing the tracker ourselves, for the children, and thanking them for it.
Imagine how useful this machinery will become for the inevitable far-right government that will eventually come.
..I'd my soon to be 15 year old asks me to get around it, I'll gladly help her.
She's autisticand it's how she's built her relationships with real life friends
She's intelligent, highly talented in multiple skills and is self taught in many many things.
So as a raver in his 50s who remembers the bullshit both the Tory scum and the post NuLabour scum have peddled they all can go fuck themselves.
I'll choose how to bring my kids up, not some brain dead MP out to please the newspaper readers.
"Do you want tea or coffee?"
"I've been looking at your drink machine there and I notice that both of those buttons appear to be delivering the same drink."
"Tea, or coffee?"
"It's clearly brownish, but it smells less like a hot drink than raw sewage."
"Look, you have two options, tea or coffee, which do you want?"
"Are they both actually raw sewage from the same pipe?"
"It's your right as a hot drink consumer to judge them on their quality in five years time. Now, tea or coffee?"
"Don't you have any other options?"
Notice the focus on repeating that it's all big tech's fault. Targeting "disappearing messages" translates to cracking down on encryption being available for anyone not verified, an outcome seen a thousand miles away by everyone with concern for privacy.
Trying to enforce a time-based curfew is absolute madness given how many websites this will affect: remember that Ofcom's definition of social media is anything that lets you communicate with another user online, not just the usual set of phone apps. Anyone who refuses to go along with this ID fiasco will be either locked out of a huge swath of the web all at once after 20:30, or simply find another way around like a proxy, VPN or another website that won't listen to any of these rules anyway. There's no way you can force those platforms to enforce the restrictions globally just in case it might be a UK user unless they're based within the UK as a company. And who would do that given the current state of the law, let alone the near future?
Killing anonymity and privacy is the focus here, not helping parents or children.
"Trying to enforce a time-based curfew is absolute madness given how many websites this will affect: remember that Ofcom's definition of social media is anything that lets you communicate with another user online, not just the usual set of phone apps."
It will also destroy even more of the remaining hobby and interest forums as it will be too much work for the (mostly voluntary) moderators to comply - so the forums will either disappear or yet more of them will migrate to Facebook, joining the many which already have moved there. This could well be another effect that the government wants - push everything under the control of a handful of big tech companies, where it's easier to keep track of it.
> destroy even more of the remaining hobby and interest forums....yet more of them will migrate to Facebook
Well then they should have promised more high paying "brand ambassador" roles to more politicians.
Facebook/Tiktok will create CBeebies Facebook/Tiktok, with parent approved accounts, billed to parent credit card. And only Facebook/Tiktok will be able to comply. Classic bootlegger+baptists model
"I've heard firsthand from families crying out for change and we will do right by them."
Like with XKCD, there's a "Simpsons Frinciac" for that:
https://frinkiac.com/comic?b=AQIBBlMwOEUwOA52DwABEvQBygNSWWVhaC4gWW91J3ZlIGdvdCB0byBoZWxwIHVzLCBkb2MuCldlJ3ZlIHRyaWVkIG5vdGhpbmcsIGFuZCB3ZSdyZSBhbGwgb3V0IG9mIGlkZWFzLgA
"The government said it intends to follow Australia's model by targeting user-to-user platforms whose primary purpose is social interaction and user-generated content. That would include services such as Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and X."
That definition also includes email. Is he targetting that?
Also, banishing disappearing messages isn't going to go down well with all the other politicians. How would they be able to plot against each other if that happened?
All this talk of VPN's, aren't people are using the family safety controls to restrict which apps are installed? that removes the VPN issue immediately.
There was an interesting positioning article around the Australia ban, it's not so much the technical block that's important but the fact it makes the parent/child conversation much easier when there is a clear legal statement.
The same point was made by the support being used to bolster the argument for this law: "Three-quarters of respondents said restrictions would lead to fewer arguments at home, while 77 percent said schools and teachers would find it easier to manage children's digital behavior."
I don't know how that's being received by others, but to me, that's one of the worst arguments I've heard. Parents have lots of control. While I usually oppose the "do this because I command you and I get to do that" style of parenting, parents can do that if more logical arguments fail. If a parent can't explain to their children why they shouldn't use social media and won't forbid them from doing it unless a law requires them, do they really care? There are far more important arguments parents need to have with their children. Those shouldn't be legislated either.
"UK loves their oppression and erosion of freedoms."
Do you think the comments in this thread (assuming most of them are from the UK) support that thesis?
If you'd said the main UK political parties and added the words "of the populace" you might have been right.
You might also spend some useful time thinking about how one person's freedom might impact on another's, how to mediate that and whether freedom must necessarily come with responsibility for society to thrive.
Like it or not, and I generally don't, countries' citizenry at large tend to get blamed for actions from that country, especially if they're longlasting ones. To demonstrate this, haven't you seen or made some statements in these forums suggesting that the US bears responsibility for the actions of its current government and suggesting that, even if that government falls, the country would still be untrustworthy, even though you know there are US citizens who oppose those actions? That's what is being said about the UK here. I'd prefer if they were more specific, but it's far from unusual and they have plenty of UK-sourced privacy erosion to complain about.
In addition, they're not necessarily wrong if they round the results. The article quotes polls on these regulations. Polls specifically used to engender support for it, so probably not great ones, but nonetheless they show rather large figures in support of the changes. There's a sizeable chunk of the public which doesn't understand or disagrees with the concerns we have against a policy like this, and they vote too.
I Agree with the digital ID by stealth. This sint going to make a lot of difference, it'll clear the low hanging fruit that then cant be bothered to work round/get parents to sign up for them. There are perhaps better ways to address this, like, maybe, parents start parenting? My son has had digital saftey explained to him by both of us and (surprisingly) the school. He know he can always talk without judgement or issues, knows what he should and shouldnt be doing and there are controls on his use, subtle, but they are there. He also considers TikTok users to all be morons (I had no part in this I'll add).
What it does do is adds another string to the argument for digital ID and as pointed out, you cant argue now because "Think of the Children"(TM)
It also opens up the argument:
Online Saftey Act didnt work...
Child social media ban didnt work...
Ok, Great Firewall of Britain Time...
Also...Youtube? Arguably one of the better organisations and again, as argued above, theres also a LOT of good on Facebook.
Video killed the radio star
Social killed the TV
Once upon a time parents were saying "enough TV for today, go and do your homework"
Now they should be saying "enough scrolling for today, go and do your homework"
This is about parents who let their 10 year olds run riot with a mobile phone and don't check. Better parenting is what we need.
Why are porn magazines on the top shelf in the newsagents?
What is to stop parents or older siblings just signing a device in as themselves (passing all the restrictions) and then handing the device to the under-16? Tired, lazy, or busy parents HAVE to be responsible for their children’s online access too!
This still sounds like a backdoor to Digital ID to me…
forget, if you are against this ban, that means you support exploiting children, abusing social media and being a downright evil person upto no good by corrupting impressible minds.
And most likely a terrorist too.
Oh and I bet any el-reg reader will be able to bypass such control in about 30 seconds
Doubtlessly, many readers of The Register possess skills necessary for organising DDoS attacks. What if easy to follow instructions were promulgated via sites intelligent teenagers are likely to visit?
Imagine the benefit to the nation should Downing Street, the Palace of Westminster, Whitehall, selected parts of the City, and royal residences be subjected to prolonged DDoS,
Of course, anybody bearing a placard with the words "DDoS the Bastards" will be arrested under the Terrorism Act. It doesn't take long for Mr Starmer, and the Home Secretary (whoever that may be) to get the cross-party Neoliberal rank and file in line to vote for a proscription. They easily succeeded in stifling criticism of Israeli atrocities; at least, they think they did.
Everybody is so focused on the downside! I'm going to exploit this market:
Welcome to Monty Python's Wholesale Beard Emporium! Three free stones with every beard purchase! Remember: these beards are definitely not for women or children who are also definitely not here for the stoning and/or online access.
I also think this is just using children as an excuse to have another go at bringing in DigitalID - plus it's Starmer looking for a legacy policy he can bring in without any budgetary implications.
Anyway, it seems to me all of the focus on regulating consumption might be coming at this the wrong way - everyone agrees these platforms are highly addictive - maybe government(s) should be working with the tech companies to regulate the algorithms and reverse some of the measures designed to keep us on the platforms all day? Perhaps work on an international framework that encourages best practice within the platforms design? Require measures like apps rate limiting after a certain amount of usage - all the addictive tweaks designed by behavioural psychologists to hook us in - for example intrusive notifications should be extremely limited outside of direct messaging. Here's another one - mandatory and standardised parental controls - currently (I have a teenage daughter so I am at the coal face with this!) each of the dozen or so apps, plus the phone OS itself, all have a different and often quite complicated way of managing parental controls and screentime. Solving that would really help parents manage this.
"Ministers are also examining further measures for under-18s, including overnight social media curfews and mandatory breaks in infinite scrolling, with additional details expected in July."
I think forcing the companies to disable infinite scrolling in certain locations (for everyone) could actually help. It's also easily implementable. Obviously doesn't stop VPNs, but are people going to get a VPN just so they can infinitely scroll?
Just governments of so called democracy's now realising that they need to control the mass like the Nazis, The Police Farce are already trained SD, used to be control the information, now it's control the narrative now, where have you been, what have you done and with whom and why, don't argue or disagree or your arrested, fast tracked to prison or worse case your killed by out of control Police.
Starmers legacy will be The Labour Nazis Party and if you think he's bad, wait until the true axis of evil gets in, Ultra Left Wing Burnham, Mad Red Millionaire Ed and Bitch Queen Rayner !
So cyber bullying and abuse such as trolls and peados only work through set hours, of course they dont. its relentless to the targets throughout the day, what plannet is Starmer and his chronies on.
Wide spread broadband and mobile technology was always going to be a risk even back 20 years ago we knew what was coming down the line. there are always predators and always prey and they are everywhere if we like it or not.
Look, something has to be done about the overwhelming tides of misinformation, rage, indoctrination, advertising on social media causing misery, suicide, violence and horrible child abuse and fascism, kids unable to concentrate etc... You can blame parents all you like but the most parents can do is take their phones away the equivalence of "don't take drugs". Now people have been calling for a ban, this is maybe because they don't understand their are other mechanisms, people for the most part will just call for a ban because its a simple blunt instrument and not think beyond that because they're unable to conceive of it, remember computer literacy is generally poor. Lets not forget, whatever you do, it'll be wrong, but something needs to be done.
You're not going to please everyone nor can you ensure that no children will be able get on social media, same with knife crime, alcohol, smoking and drugs but if for the majority it works then good, but it shouldn't impact on adults. That said I don't see a ban as the right thing, remove algorithmic content delivery, infinite scrolling and advertising and addictive designs patterns, google did this with the adpocolypse because advertisers were upset and withdrawing from youtube because their ads were being shown on content they didn't like, the difference here is money and the reason why its not been done is again due to money there's no incentive so legislation is required.
Of course some parents will be fine with their kids being on social media same as parents who let their young kids watch 18 movies. But seriously what do we do? We've kicked this can down the road for too long already.
Here's an idea for an age verification method that wouldn't mean handing over data for all people of all ages (i'm guessing that's all the vitriol). You link your kid's phone's account with the parents I believe apple and google have family accounts, the parent set's the age of the child in their account it works across all their devices and you have an age txt record in DNS with parental controls enabled those are check automatically (banned by default), you are then empowering the parents and they can be given a list of domains the kids have been visiting and can allow, if a site claims to be safe and isn't you can fine or some other punishment. Over time we could have a preloaded list of sites child friendly if we can come to a consensus. Perfect is the enemy of good and its going to take many solutions to solve this problem.
Banning social media is very different from banning books, books contain knowledge, wisdom, curated stories and cause you to think and question. Social media could do that of course but its mostly click-bait, rage, misinformation monetised by the platforms rewarding the abusers which is why its so prolific.
What you suggest mostly already exists. Domain allowlisting isn't in the default restrictions, but filter lists with sites either added by organizations or voluntarily adding themselves are plentiful and easily enabled per device or per connection. Plenty of existing software can add the stricter method of only allowing domains you've approved, though I expect parents actually doing that are going to get annoyed quickly by having to approve things so often, still, their choice. This means that any parent who has bothered to read about and enable that can do what you're suggesting already. This leaves us in the situation that some parents didn't do that because they don't care, either at all or at least enough to do the work, and what if anything do we do about that?
Legislators in the countries that have done this probably don't know about what exists because they, like so many others, don't care, but part of the problem is that some aren't turning on these restrictions because they don't agree there's a problem or they don't want to argue with their children, or they didn't bother to find out how. If those happen, are those problems we need to solve or valid choices? Existing laws seem to decide that these are not valid and everyone must follow these, and that's the remaining part of the vitriol. I'm most concerned about identification of every activity, but I also don't like that politicians have decided they should decide what children may or may not do and enforce it on every individual, parent, child, or otherwise.
> something has to be done about the overwhelming tides of misinformation, rage, indoctrination, advertising on social media causing misery, suicide, violence and horrible child abuse and fascism, kids unable to concentrate etc.
Stop letting Farcebook profit off it?
No you're right, better to implement unimplementable draconian laws that will be ignored by the very bogeymen they're claiming to get to grips with and which future extremist governments certainly won't abuse.
Same reason nobody's mentioned IRC. Primary reason is because we've discussed them, on and off, for decades ... but today's kiddies see them as archaic[0], and therefore not cool and thus not worth the (minimal) effort of learning. So some of us still use them, but we've pretty much given up on enlightening the last couple generations.
[0] "Archaic" here defined as "Anything invented before the iPhone"[1]. I'm just repeating what I've heard, don't shoot the messenger.
[1] A couple of kids down in the bard were arguing over "the most important thing in history" the other day. Options included Pokémon Go and Beyoncé's "Lemonade". I weep.
I got on the bus today. A lady with a three year old in a push chair got on the bus after me.
When mother and three year old were settled, mother handed her smartphone to the three year old.
I wonder how Keir Starmer plans to stop three year olds using mummy's smartphone.
"91 percent of parents who responded supported a minimum age of 16 before social media platforms can offer services to children. More than four in five respondents said the risks of social media outweigh the benefits for children, while 88 percent said fewer children would be exposed to inappropriate or harmful content if age restrictions were introduced."
...Fewer than 10% of respondents gave even a moment of thought to how this could go wrong
As Molly Russel's father say, this is taking the easy way out.
Social media in its current form is harmful to children. Also to vulnerable adults, thick adults, people who know thick adults and most other adults using it. The right way to deal with this is to deal with that, not to require age verification to use sites.
The only age verification available will be identity verification (how much are palantir donating?), with the usual problems around data leaks, abused spouses, and political views that don't align with those f oppressive governments.
