527
Australia’s teen social media ban is a flop. But there’s no joy in ‘I told you so’
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2026
527 points (97.3% liked)
Technology
83600 readers
3570 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Surely there's always time for both the kids and parents to set aside to learn every new technology and the appropriate controls to restrict them.
And when someone says it makes far more sense to just not give their kids said technology until they are older, we have people like you arguing on behalf of the technology.
Aww poor little facebook, we dont want to hurt its fee-fees! Let's just give it another chance! I'm sure we can trust it this time if we just learn how to use it right!
How am I arguing on behalf of the technology? I want people to understand the technology so they know how to protect themselves effectively if they use it and so can make effective decisions on how their kids interact with it.
The technology sucks, but the technology is not going away and any fucking moron can bypass the age verification. If you think age verification is stopping teenagers from using tiktok then you're an idiot. I'm arguing that the implemented solution is not in fact anything close to a solution, and that pulling this thread and trying to implement something in the same vein that would actually work is a terrible idea because it fucks the privacy of every Australian on the internet, even more so than the current solution.
Maybe, just maybe, parents shouldn't let their kids in awful places, and also awful places shouldnt let kids in. Turns out parental controls are bullshit, and the only real answer is RTFM or dont use it at all. A business and its customers dont exist without each other, so the blame is on both sides.
All that said, the government definitely could help the parental understand and controls side of thing too using regulation.