That’s a good point, but I guess it’s because I don’t see it having much to do with parenting at all. I don’t have kids, I don’t presume to know exactly how difficult it is except knowing that is far more difficult than people who say “just do this” say.

Kids are the most impressionable and susceptible to this influence to this but everyone is impacted, that’s my point. Starting by protecting them makes sense, but that’s why I lead off by saying I support a ban for everyone. It’s hyperbolic, but if it really was a binary choice between having social media as is or not having it at all I would choose not.

Parenting is being used as a scapegoat here. 30 year olds can and do fall into this trap just as easily and no parent is coming to save them.

I think the issues you describe are arguably part of the situation, but we saw a massive increase these right wing, bigoted attitudes almost overnight. That doesn’t just happen because boys and men are neglected. Men enjoy massive societal privilege and power, married with some expectations and pressure. Mostly put on them by other men who benefit from retaining that power structure or who are deathly terrified of change. It’s toxic masculinity in a nutshell.

The position you describe is frequently dismissed as misogyny because it is one many misogynists hold. Men have had to give up privilege and make space for women, are no longer the centre of the universe and all things must cater to them, and that’s why they are easily swayed to right wing talking heads who tell them actually, society has failed you because they think women and minorities are more important than you. We think you’re great as is, so you don’t have to shut up, give up anything or make space for others. We’ll put you back where you belong, right on top. I can’t sympathize with that. It’s just hateful selfishness, pure and simple.

Kids don’t find Rogan or Tate. It’s shoved in their face by social media companies because it’s engagement bait. Social media is the starting point. I can’t stop people from seeking these things out, there will always be a group. But deplatforming this content from social media will massively reduce the number of people that are exposed to it. Short of that, removing children from these spaces will do the same, at least for them.

I don’t think this is worse than doing nothing. I think we have seen where we’ve come in a couple years. This is so much worse than anyone could have imagined. If it helps, I would much prefer deplatforming of hateful content enforced by the social media companies with harsh penalties and strict regulation. Pushing these people to the corners of the internet does help, nobody gives a fuck what happens on Truth Social for example outside of Trump’s ramblings. I agree that Meta amongst other companies is trying to push toothless legislation that will only further their ability to track and sell each individual user’s data. I also agree the idea of “submit your ID to every social media company” is about the worst shit imaginable and not a solution. So I don’t think we fully disagree.

But I’m not willing to turn a blind eye to it, and I’m not waiting for idealistic solutions like “parent boys better” to magically solve everything.

Poor parenting is arguably some of the problem, but it’s not a realistic solution. The right loves solutions like “personal responsibility” because they are basically excuses to do nothing.

It’s your fault that tech bro oligarchs have hijacked your child’s brain with billions of dollars in research to create the most addictive thing possible, just like it’s your fault that your child is overweight when they are constantly exposed to food that is engineered from the ground up to manipulate the pleasure centres in their brain. Is it true? I mean, a little. Sure. But are there steps we can take as a society to make that job less than completely impossible and a constant battle? Yes.

I think it’s much easier to say to parents “just do this” than it is to do that when you have a real person in front of you pleading that your rules are way worse than their peers and will serve to alienate them from everyone they know.

Parental controls are not a solution, let’s get real. You can buy a SIM with data and a functional internet device for less than $50. Hell, you can get castoff devices for free. You can get free internet access anywhere. Parental controls are a tool that you can and should use to increase barriers, however they are not a panacea.

Regardless, the argument here still boils down to “wait for people to fix themselves and get mad when they don’t”. This is never a solution. We don’t say to people “just eat more iodine and you won’t get goiters”. We put iodine in shit that they eat and solve the problem.

I agree, this solution is painfully flawed. I don’t know what to do though, and I sincerely believe our fear of regulating online content has landed us in this current mess. I think the path we were on before Trump, deplatforming hateful content, was actually pretty good. You could see the temperature change as Nazis, misogynists and Trump himself were kicked off platform after platform and relegated to their own crappy little corners of the internet.

Then this shit came roaring back, Musk bought Twitter, Zuck went full facist and Trump came back into office and everything went to shit. In the space of a year, we now have the richest man in the world on one of the biggest social media platforms and the most followers amplifying literal Nazis, white supremacists and misogynists on the daily. You spend 10 minutes on YouTube watching gaming content and you will have videos from every right-wing influencer in your feed competing for your attention.

It’s so, so bad. Forget happiness stats, we’re letting the far-right brainwash a generation and make them actual Nazis under our nose and we’ve done fuck all about it. We will look back on this period as one of the biggest generational losses of control we’ve ever had and it will take decades to undo the damage, if we ever can.

I feel your concerns here, I really do. I have them all myself. I don’t want harm to come to marginalized groups as a result of tying online activity to a real world ID. But I’m not aware of anywhere to start that has any political support besides here, and I truly believe that letting this continue unchecked will be far worse for us in the long run.

I support a social media ban for people over 16 too. I notice the people criticizing this offer no solution except “parent better”. I’m surprised Lemmy has such a stupid and regressive take. I think if the story were about the results of this issue, such as a rise in misogyny or racism amongst youth people would rightly blame unregulated, corporate social media for landing us in the massive right-wing backslide we’re in right now.

Yet these threads are indistinguishable from the tech bro anarcho-capitalist solution to these problems of “fuck you, figure it out lol”. We’ve waited too long and the right wing has already poisoned Gen Z men and turned them into Joe Rogan loving, misogynistic, racist little monsters. The first generation in modern history to be more conservative than their parents.

I don’t love age verification either. It’s a deeply flawed solution to a massive, unchecked problem that is already unravelling decades of social progress. But I’m not hearing much in the way of alternative solutions. I would prefer massive regulation of all social media platforms, but that’s political poison and will never happen. So before you knee-jerk to “freedom and personal responsibility”, look at the world right now and acknowledge that we need to do better at a societal level. Then come with solutions, not just criticism.