this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2025
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Get off the Fediverse Zuckerberg. It's as dangerous for mental health as cigarettes are for physical health.
Whether that's true is irrelevant. This isn't something the government should be getting involved in, outside of prosecuting parents for neglecting their kids.
I don't let my kids use social media because they aren't ready for it. If they are ready for it, but my government says they can't, I'm going to use technical means (i.e. VPN, having them use my account, etc) to subvert the law. It should be my choice if my kids can access something, not the government's.
If the government wants to tackle this, they should be working with parents on the issue. Maybe sponsor a FOSS content blocker or work with social media orgs to create a concept of custodial accounts, and have some way for that to work w/ the FOSS content blocker. But don't unilaterally ban something because you think it's harmful.
If I want to smoke, that should 100% be my right, provided I'm not bothering other people. If my kids smoke, that should be 100% on me for being a negligent parent and allowing them to do something harmful (assuming I should know about it). The government shouldn't be making parenting decisions for me, that's my responsibility.
I can get behind that, but that's not typically the way it works currently. Typically laws restrict children from the use or purchase of certain harmful substances. Same thing with access to pornography. With the data on what SM does to mental health in children it makes no sense restrict those other things but not this.
Agreed, but not in the way you intended.
If a kid wants to smoke or drink, they'll smoke or drink. The laws that exist won't really stop that, so they mostly punish innocent people. If I want a 6-pack of beer and I trust my kid to get it for me, I can't just give them cash and send them down to the corner store to get it. I used to be able to do that, but now I can't, and yet kids still have access to alcohol and tobacco.
Social media is similar. If kids want to be on social media, they'll find a way. They'll falsify evidence, use VPNs, or get someone else to sign up for them. It largely hurts the innocent who now have to show ID to sign up, potentially violating their privacy in case the site doesn't properly secure or delete the data.
In both cases, the real solution is w/ poor parenting. The way you stop a kid from smoking, drinking, or getting addicted to social media is the same: you build trust, explain the risks, and teach them how to interact with it responsibly through being a good example. Legislative solutions aren't solutions, they're feel-good measures that end up doing more harm than good IMO.
This doesn't make sense. Forbidding social media is as stupid as forbidding video games, it's old people not trying to find the real cause and instead passing measures which will be completely useless. Social media doesn't necessarily mean Meta
You're saying that social media is not the real cause of the youth mental health crisis? Do you propose a different cause? Because I know of a good few, very well-qualified people (of varying ages) that might explicitly disagree with you...
As a 17 year old who only really uses Lemmy, Youtube and IRC I think social media is the least of my problems. I wouldn't spend so much time online if there was anything else to do. The outside is a suburban wasteland that offers nothing. The most I can do is walk to the library an hour away and read a book there.
Depends where you're from
Yeah I guess. North American suburbs are not built for youth. It sucks here. I wish I was born in the Netherlands or something but where I live I have no way to actually safely leave my subdivision since its divided from the nearest city by the Highway 401.
What mental health crisis?
The one you're too lazy to search?
You're the one bringing a fact, you're the one supposed to source it. Anyway, your source doesn't talk about any increase of prevalence, how can we know there's a crisis from your source? Could be just that we diagnose more cases these times (or even the same digits, since we don't have evolution data in your source). Even worse: your source literally state Digital media as a means of preventing mental health issues by spreading educative content. Nowhere does your source state that digital media is THE cause of the young mental health "crisis".
From my own personal view I find it very difficult to disagree with every part of your second sentence.
So you agree with some part ?
Yes.