I saw this article, which made me think about it…
Kids under 16 to be banned from social media after Senate passes world-first laws
Seeing what kind of brainrot kids are watching, makes me think it’s a good idea. I wouldn’t say all content is bad, but most kids will get hooked on trash content that is intentionally designed to grab their attention.
What would be an effective way to enforce a restriction with the fewest possible side effects? And who should be the one enforcing that restriction in your opinion?
I don’t think a ban is coming at the issue from the right angle. Social media misuse is fundamentally a problem of addiction, and we have a checkered past of causing harm when banning things. For a historical analogue, look at the Prohibition era of the United States.
Ultimately, bans for these things don’t work because people will get around it anyway. And that’s exactly when dangerous things happen. Using the Prohibition example again, people poisoned themselves trying to make illegal hooch because they were determined to drink anyway.
I think education is the answer. And I mean honestly, isn’t education always the answer? But you’ve got to educate your kids about the content they’re using. We’ve got to educate the parents about the dangerousness of unlimited access to screens. If people don’t understand the danger, then they don’t recognize the danger, and suddenly they’ve stumbled on danger.
I’m sure everyone has heard a story about a straight-laced kid who grew up with strict parents, and then at the first opportunity to party in college goes on a bender to destroy their life. Those kids’ parents really did them a disservice by not preparing them for reality. If their only education on drugs and alcohol is “don’t do them,” then the child isn’t really aware of the risks. They just see that everyone else is doing them and having fun, and then they go off the deep end before they realize how bad things are getting.
Social media’s the same thing. The day your kid turns seventeen they’ll have every chance to succumb to brainrot on their own volition. Without being informed of how or why that happens, there’s nothing stopping someone from falling into any internet rabbithole.
But there’s no massively powerful industry that is legally pushing drugs on kids. That’s the difference.
I agree that the behavior of these companies to hook their users using the darkest psychological patterns is disgusting. It doesn’t become any less disgusting once the user turns 17 though, and no framework is in place to prevent those teens from falling prey once they gain access.
Even if we all agree that a ban is warranted, my stance is that a ban alone isn’t enough. It needs to be accompanied by education and harm reduction.
And it needs to be honest, scientific, and good-faith education. We don’t need another DARE program demonizing something because misinformation can be more harmful than failure to educate
Education works for rationally thinking people. Kids these days are given access to digital devices and social media before they reach such a stage, and habits are formed from too young on
How does someone advance to “rationally thinking” without receiving education?
I don’t disagree that habits picked up in childhood are more difficult to break. But I don’t think it’s a problem exclusively for children either.
Many of us are growing up with parents and grandparents with brainrot. And sure, maybe they would have been more susceptible as kids if the technology existed then. But we all would be better off with decent digital and media literacy.
Plus, who’s giving the kids these devices anyway? It’s usually the parents - who have been raised not to talk to strangers- giving their kids unfettered access to all the strangers of the world
Learning how to rationally think and learning to identify „self destroying“ patterns and how to avoid them are two different things imo. You need one for the other.