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I hate to break it to you, but technically this forum is social media.

And, yes, it is a huge waste of time, but here I am, wasting my time... but I am self-aware enough to realize it, and realize that it is my choice.

Perhaps we should be teaching children more about personal responsibility, so they have a better chance in this messed up world that we have created for them. Of course, since we aren't very good at taking personal responsibility, I'm not sure who would teach them.

The world would be a lot better if we worried whether we were doing everything we can to help everyone succeed rather than pointing out the mistakes we feel others are making, but as a species we prefer to cast stones. One of the main reasons for social media's success, sadly.
You are not breaking anything to me. The forums on this site would be included in the 18+ or 21+ requirement that I've mentioned. And yes, I am over 21.
 
How about blatantly unconstitutional? It would never fly in the US at least to ban people from using an app past the age of 18. Maybe the laws are different in your country but it would be the easiest court case ever in the US.
Age restrictions on apps isn't unconstitutional. You might want to study US law and our constitution a little more before you comment. The US is my home country by the way, my family has been here since the 1740's.
 
You are not breaking anything to me. The forums on this site would be included in the 18+ or 21+ requirement that I've mentioned. And yes, I am over 21.
Cool. Welcome to the forum.
Like others have mentioned, I think all social media should be 18+, if not 21+. I've lived without it, then with it when it came along, and for the past four years I've lived without it again. I can tell you that I was and am a lot happier without it. To each their own though.
Where do you buy your time machines? I could really use one, too.
 
Facebook did that with me. I wasn't about to give them my ID so created a different name, started posting and then I got an email saying they do not believe my Facebook name is a real person and they have disabled my account until I can prove that I am a real person. Because apparently the T&C's of Facebook requires people to use their real names, names that they use in real life. Here's the kicker, to appeal their decision I have to provide them with a mobile number so they can text me some info that I then have to put into the site to start the appeals process.

I mean how dumb do they think I am, not only do they want my real name but also my mobile phone number. Yes I can use a pay as you go sim to get around the mobile number thing but that's not the point, the point is that Facebook wanted a 'live' mobile phone number. Just ripe for giving to one of there many advertising partners.
Oh, yeah. I know that thing, happened to me a lot. Hopefully where I live I can buy sim card without tying it up to my identity. Dumb politicians only think about banning this and demanding SIM register but I have collected like 5 sim cards that I use specifically for that.

The reason they send emails like “we blocked you because wethink its not you, give your ID citizen!” is because someone on platform snitched you. Example: you wrote a comment in some community and many people disagreed, one in a ten would likely to go to your profile and report you for “bearing fake name”. From there Facebook mods step in and if they suspect – basically locked account. So if you leave comments be careful not to leave them in places where there is a possibility someone would report you to show “disagreement”.

Few lifehacks and workarounds I have noticed over time:

• Never register dumb account names, they have some sort of blacklist for this (for example Sam Sung, Hugh Mungus, Hitler Mussolini etc);
• Before ever going fake/anonymous on facebook and such, think exactly who you want to fake: a German person, Dutch, British or American. From this just look for common names in these countries and common surnames;
• Better keep few accounts – one for casual stalking where you don’t make any friends or don’t leave comments (no matter how strong is the urge) and one disposable to do “whatever it takes”;
• Do not ever try to put someone’s photo, especially if it is a well-known person. Rather put some picture or random stuff: a tree, flower, sky etc. If they search your photo thru their database (it is large) and it does not correspond – instant ban for impersonification
 
Counterpoint: Social media enables responsible teens to find and seize opportunities and achieve higher level skill and appreciation of their hobbies and aspirations typically more than what can be had from any local community not the suburbs.

From Behance, Dribble, to even X.

It’s not far-fetched for teens to get free tickets to conferences or discover modern and emerging means of pursuing what they love through those channels.

Social media is not a requirement for hobbies, building skills, or maintaining skills. It wasn’t before social media, and it still isn’t. Can information in support of such things be found in social media? Yes. But it requires effort, focus, and yes, maturity, to sort through it all and ignore the massive amount of garbage thrown your way. For many, the payoff simply isn’t worth the effort, and for many parents, it isn’t worth the risks. This should hot be hard to understand. If social media works for you, great. Knock yourself out.

Funny enough that ABSOLUTELY is the case for most high-earning jobs that are not at all static on information and skills to be great at such as engineering, music, performative arts, and sports.


As a parent you and the school you forced your kid to settle with are responsible gor having your child efficiently use socoal
media to benefit and maximize their life—not vicariously live life through others, mindlessly death scroll about things very distant of being beneficial to them, and seek out communities and people that benefit and respect who they are and are becoming.

So no: It makes no sense to devoid a meaningful amount of teens from social
media.

I’ll ignore the presumptuous dig (something you have shown a penchant for here in MR) about my child’s education for the time being.

Everything you say I should be doing as a parent is more easily done by curtailing social media and providing the child with safe sources for whatever interests they have.

The suggestion that a child would miss out on something vital for their development by not being on social media is ridiculous.
 
That makes no sense from a standpoint of the network effects of social media that would become an unnecessary utility bill for things in which isn’t necessarily consistently useful for you in a particular month (or however frequently a user decides to get charged).

While scholarships/opportunities as well as modern tool, techniques, examples/performatives, and topics on social media platforms are consistently invaluable for emerging engineers, performative arts practitioners, models, musicians, and etc, it’s a stretch to force everyone to pay to use almost social media platforms.

Whether that’s LinkedIn, X (real-time info is especially invaluable for engineers, designers, and musicians), or Tik Tok (long overdue for a short-video successor to Vine—especially for comedians and fashionistas).

The whole “you are the product” rhetoric without more nuance is pointlessly very cynical and you can frankly frame various participant-driven social phenomenon that way.

Without such nuanced it’s veiled entitlement and naive oversimplification of the dynamics needed to support a site that typically employs scarce and expensive human talent to even create the invaluable features and public exposure users have to interact with those interested or applicable with how they want to express themselves and communicate online.

Also a common saying in the internet over the years “keep that same energy” organizing free for users things in-person or digitally that has the positive impact or capabilities social media can have in any sustainable matter that also pays people to support you and sustain you as well.
No nuance necessary.

“If you are not paying for the product, YOU are the product.”
  1. Social media platforms are providing a service (the product).
  2. Providing a service costs money, which you agreed with in your comment.
  3. If you use that service without paying for it, the platform uses you (your personal data) to earn money and pay for running the service.
YOU are the product.

It’s really just that simple. Nothing is truly “free” and thinking otherwise is just plain naive.

Unnecessary utility bills? Seriously? If it’s not consistently useful, stop using it (and paying for it). If a social media service is worthwhile to you, you should be willing to pay for it. If you are OK with paying for it by having the platform exploit you and your personal information, great. Again, knock yourself out. Many of us are not Ok with that and don’t get enough benefit from participating in social media to justify paying for it (directly or indirectly by being exploited).

Everyone makes their own individual cost/benefit determination for whatever they consume. This should not even be a point of contention unless you are actively looking for a reason to post your next wall of text.
 
No nuance necessary.

“If you are not paying for the product, YOU are the product.”
  1. Social media platforms are providing a service (the product).
  2. Providing a service costs money, which you agreed with in your comment.
  3. If you use that service without paying for it, the platform uses you (your personal data) to earn money and pay for running the service.
YOU are the product.

It’s really just that simple. Nothing is truly “free” and thinking otherwise is just plain naive.

Unnecessary utility bills? Seriously? If it’s not consistently useful, stop using it (and paying for it). If a social media service is worthwhile to you, you should be willing to pay for it. If you are OK with paying for it by having the platform exploit you and your personal information, great. Again, knock yourself out. Many of us are not Ok with that and don’t get enough benefit from participating in social media to justify paying for it (directly or indirectly by being exploited).

Everyone makes their own individual cost/benefit determination for whatever they consume. This should not even be a point of contention unless you are actively looking for a reason to post your next wall of text.

…Note with your logic being a data point of anonymous behavior alongside data you willingly make public that is then extrapolated via big data to be meaningful means users are always the product of essentially any Website/App—even intermediary services with logging.

That includes analytics on government sites/apps.

UX/Dev is also informed by such things towards things being worthwhile or not. This also justifies or not even non-profit going ahead with such things as well by their beneficiaries supporting them or not.

It’s a hopelessly cynical way of looking at digital apps in capitalistic societies and the sustainability of things online that are free.

You know what happens when things that are not art have no promising data to justifiably sustain them by user data by first-parties (maintainers/employers) and third-parties?

They shut down without government or third-party funding intervention.

Trusting things or not and if sufficient scrutiny/safeguards are applied/enforced is a different thing or not.

Having rights taken away from teens at an important stage of their self-identity and self-actualization is directly from the concerns of cynical folk like you is inherently problematic when teens of recent years have immensely benefited from social media—especially first generation kids, gifted and talented kids, and so on.

Parents across modern societies are very flawed, naive, and benignly tech illiterate compared to kids and other adults towards such absolute sweeping stances being ridiculous when there is widespread and obvious tech illiteracy across all societies
 
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Social media is not a requirement for hobbies, building skills, or maintaining skills. It wasn’t before social media, and it still isn’t. Can information in support of such things be found in social media? Yes. But it requires effort, focus, and yes, maturity, to sort through it all and ignore the massive amount of garbage thrown your way. For many, the payoff simply isn’t worth the effort, and for many parents, it isn’t worth the risks. This should hot be hard to understand. If social media works for you, great. Knock yourself out.



I’ll ignore the presumptuous dig (something you have shown a penchant for here in MR) about my child’s education for the time being.

Everything you say I should be doing as a parent is more easily done by curtailing social media and providing the child with safe sources for whatever interests they have.

The suggestion that a child would miss out on something vital for their development by not being on social media is ridiculous.
Ironically, you’re doing obviously a straw-man fallacy a typical and 7th/8th grade student and teens (especially on debate teams) can easily weed out:

You’re arguing I didn’t make. I never said what’s easier as far as proving kids with “safe” sources. I mention the lack of exceptions and safeguards teens have to challenge, supersede, and have exceptions to sweeping restrictions for their age group.

Also you cannot either-or whether kids would/will miss something vital for their development: There is an abundance of kids who have benefit from social media—again especially top performing kids in educational, performative arts, and sports.

Also most adults fail to continuously learn to maintain the level of math and education a typical kids is expected to be proficient in and have mastered—and when it comes to tech, kids typically likely have far more understanding of the utility of tech with the rampant amount of tech illiteracy throughout society.

Parents consistently aren’t great at teaching, entertaining, and enlightening/inspiring in the matter media and education provides especially as their cognitive health deteriorates—that’s especially the case in modern society as couples prolong having kids thanks to modern health tech enabling this for women.

Accordingly, Parents making sweeping changing on a teen’s use of social media who are likely tech illiterate about its use with no ways to veto/pushback during that important stage of self-actualization can easily be argued being ridiculous.

It’s a draconian means of control of teens in general supported by many years of research regarding Gifted & Talented children.

It’s also ethnocentric with people of US teen age being globally responsibly using social media effectively and substantially better off than their parents ever were their age and in the present as well as their US peers.

Kids who are Gifted & Talented have monetized from social media in the hundreds of thousands to their aspirations (including scholarships and free edu help like free passes to conferences), discovered opportunities/rivals through social media, and so on.

Heck I was one of them, and mentor kids that have done the same. Anecdotal of course
 
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Not a solution. Social networks will be dead in no time, companies know that. People not eager to upload their real IDs to web, myself included. Recently YouTube asked me to upload ID to be able to upload artworks or smth, well I don’t trust them my information, I just deleted the account and forgot about such idea to develop this blog.

There are many other means to confirm identity of user and control deviant behavior online, and companies have been effective doing it so far. After all, if media can suppress one narrative over another and disable comments for certain discussions, it makes bot activity almost ineffective
…My point is governments need to provide the infrastructure for identification so no site owns and deals with that stuff directly.

That’s frankly why even the adult industry has opted to merely leave US states without proper identification systems with their verification law mandates: Why the heck as a business should I bear the responsibility dealing with IDs and having to expend costs to do so?

That should be the problem of governments. No one wants to be liable for government-issued stuff that should have been government-managed in the first place.

It’s archaic systems involving birthdates or merely clicking “I am over 18”: No person with basic reading and tech literacy skills is gonna have a problem circumventing that
 
Ironically, you’re doing obviously a straw-man fallacy a typical and 7th/8th grade student and teens (especially on debate teams) can easily weed out:

You’re arguing I didn’t make. I never said what’s easier as far as proving kids with “safe” sources. I mention the lack of exceptions and safeguards teens have to challenge, supersede, and have exceptions to sweeping restrictions for their age group.

Also you cannot either-or whether kids would/will miss something vital for their development: There is an abundance of kids who have benefit from social media—again especially top performing kids in educational, performative arts, and sports.

Also most adults fail to continuously learn to maintain the level of math and education a typical kids is expected to be proficient in and have mastered—and when it comes to tech, kids typically likely have far more understanding of the utility of tech with the rampant amount of tech illiteracy throughout society.

Parents consistently aren’t great at teaching, entertaining, and enlightening/inspiring in the matter media and education provides especially as their cognitive health deteriorates—that’s especially the case in modern society as couples prolong having kids thanks to modern health tech enabling this for women.

Accordingly, Parents making sweeping changing on a teen’s use of social media who are likely tech illiterate about its use with no ways to veto/pushback during that important stage of self-actualization can easily be argued being ridiculous.

It’s a draconian means of control of teens in general supported by many years of research regarding Gifted & Talented children.

It’s also ethnocentric with people of US teen age being globally responsibly using social media effectively and substantially better off than their parents ever were their age and in the present as well as their US peers.

Kids who are Gifted & Talented have monetized from social media in the hundreds of thousands to their aspirations (including scholarships and free edu help like free passes to conferences), discovered opportunities/rivals through social media, and so on.

Heck I was one of them, and mentor kids that have done the same. Anecdotal of course

If you feel outsourcing your children’s development to complete strangers, knock yourself out. No one will stop you.
 
Age restrictions on apps isn't unconstitutional. You might want to study US law and our constitution a little more before you comment. The US is my home country by the way, my family has been here since the 1740's.
I am deeply familiar with the constitution given that my father was a teacher on constitutional law. An age restriction for adults on an app would be blatantly unconstitutional as a restriction of speech and association. Seems like you need more study not me.

Meanwhile it doesn’t matter how long your family has lived in the US, that doesn’t make you more knowledgeable.
 
I am deeply familiar with the constitution given that my father was a teacher on constitutional law. An age restriction for adults on an app would be blatantly unconstitutional as a restriction of speech and association. Seems like you need more study not me.

Meanwhile it doesn’t matter how long your family has lived in the US, that doesn’t make you more knowledgeable.
When did I say that living in the US for a certain amount of time makes me more knowledgable? I never did. Please post a link from a reputable source showing me the federal law and how said law has been applied, that states that it is illegal in the United States for a phone app to have an age restriction of say, 21 and older. I've seen age restrictions on apps like DraftKings, where you have to be 21 and older, pending on the state you are in, to use the app. Therefore, I'm not sure where you are getting your information because age restrictions on apps for adults over the age of 18 are already in place.
 
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