https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/19/a-surprising-number-of-ipad-kids-are-on-x-study-finds/
Over 30% of 7- to 9-year-olds have an X account, according to a new report.
Is it really any worse than Gen X's symbol of youthful rebellion being a cable TV channel owned and operated by Viacom so they can advertise music that's been packaged up by the big three labels?
I mean it's run by the biggest kid, so I guess it's understandable that they at least want to check out what their like-minded fellow is doing over there.
I hope they turn away in disgust.
Parents, all you have to do is talk near them about how cool X is to you, while suppressing your gag reflex long enough for them to cringe.
I’m surprised that Facebook consistently ranks higher than Snapchat on these charts. I thought younger generations considered Facebook to be for “old people” for just about 7 years now.
Facebook in Brazil survives through groups, I don't think people actually engage with the feed, most use it as forum each one inside their own groups.
It's just not true in reality though. I see people from young teenagers to people in their twenties and thirties using Facebook. It's dominant amongst all age groups and the "Facebook is for old people" trope is a myth that needs to die out.
I don't disagree. I'm just saying, it's still incredibly popular. I don't even have an account myself.
Maybe it's because they have to? Keeping in touch with older relatives, following local events, etc
I mean, you don't need Facebook to do any of those things you listed. People can still call, or text, or use a myriad of different messaging apps like Signal, Telegram, Viber etc.You don't need Facebook to find out about events or concerts and the like either.
You are correct, however the reality is more nuanced. Good luck getting any of the old people in my family to try a different app for messaging. You can set it up for them, but hoo boy, "fixing" it when they move it or something else is a full time job and not worth the effort.
I use discord and text messaging for my family. People keep telling me to get Facebook for marketplace but I'll use other sites for that.
I mostly use Signal and SMS for a few people. Facebook isn't worth it just for Marketplace. Online shopping isn't that important, let alone for second hand goods.
Yeah, apart from what another person said about alternative apps... Events organized by local communities or businesses are often advertised in Facebook only. I know of a few local businesses in my area with Facebook being their only online presence.
It's an anti-social network, makes sense with the trend of gen alpha sharing less and less, they will stumble through a lot of porn though...
So what. Everyone was on twitter in middle school for me back when it first became a thing. It's not new news.
Twitter now is what 4chan was then in many ways. This should be disconcerting in the least.
Yeah but 4chan could actually be fucking solid at time, tg was always fun. Oh and the image board format made the schizo posts fucking hilarious sometime. Also my little pony cum jar, that level of degeneracy is far more isolated on twitter.
As unenforcable as they've always been, and honestly I prefer it that way. Really don't want to give my ID to random websites.
You should have to actually validate your age to use social media and you should be required to be 18.
People use their Face ID all day every day. What are you talking about? You don’t think Apple has all that data?
Bet you’re fine with using government IDs for porn sites as well. 🤦♂️
The internet was better when everyone was just a random username and people didn’t use their real names for everything.
The execution is poor but I don’t se anything wrong with restricting kids from accessing porn. Especially violent porn. Some of the toxic and violent behavior men exhibit in society is due to porn.
Don’t let red and blue blind your better judgment. Think freely.
You need to understand privacy laws and understand it’s the fucking parents responsibility to protect their kids from things they don’t want them to see.
You are getting into the territory of thought policing and need to learn to think before using “your better judgment” to control other people.
Why don’t we let kids into adult video stores or sex shops? We live in a digital world and it’s time to put the keyboard away if you can’t get with that. There is a solution whether your cave brain can handle it or not. Idk what it is yet, but it can be done effectively and as safely as you give away your info the people online today.
Or and hear me out, parents could parent their children! Monitor your children's internet, put the basic amount of effort into learning how to block websites, do some form of parenting and stop trying to be your kids friends.
Yes it’s called installing blockers on your children’s devices or controlling their access to the internet till an age that you personally are ok with your child accessing the internet. Teaching them critical thinking and internet literacy would go a long way as well.
How about instead of getting triggered that your corporate daddy isn’t nannying humanity, go out and put some effort into parenting your own children and teaching them better?
Do you even have kids or are you just getting offended?
Big businesses can afford that.. Will ya let smaller ones or hobbyists off the hook?
I ain't giving out my home address like it's a passport boarder crossing. How do I tell if the faceID given over the internet is from that person? Could be a dog.
Smaller ones are often the most fri he a d problematic so no, they’re not off the hook. Same way you wouldn’t give your credit card to a rando shop online.
Your Face ID would need to be registered somewhere else with to validate that you registered your face and not your dog. Big problems need big solutions.
What suggests to you smaller ones are the most problematic?? When I think of younger people interacting online I think of big places like TikTok, I don't think of a random mastodon server.
The issue is not that a dog turned up to get a picture of their face, it's that if I have a picture of your face now I can pretend to be you. Woof.
Think about 8chan and other underground social sites that are breeding grounds for radicalized youth.
Apple has pictures of all of our faces. Companies have your voice if they want. It’s too late to worry about that. Anybody can be you if they want to. Eventually they could do it with a single photo if not already.
No I don't think we should give corpos access to even more identifying info about us. You have a kid YOU have the responytobtake care of them not me. If you believe a kid should be able to go on the internet without proper surveillance it's on you if something happens to that kid not me. I would not give my kids a blank plane ticket to go anywhere they want in the world without surveillance, it's the same for the internet. It's not my responsibility to secure your kid it's yours.
U don’t have to do anything unless u work for the agency that is verifying age. Would you say the same about school shooters? Not your problem. Up to parents to stop their kids. Unfortunately, we allow anybody to create life as there are a lot of bad parents.
Your argument does not make sense. I defend my kid from school shooting by not living in the States. Don't give guns to deranged people and most of your problems with school shooting is solved.
I do not have to give my ID when I walk around a school.
Letting a kid roam on the internet is more like giving them blank plane tickets than sending them to school.
it's not always about your kids. it's about the other kids that aren't being parented. that's why there are age restrictions for things like alcohol and guns.
Age restriction on cigarettes and alcohol is not for kids that are not parented but to prevent companies abusing kids to make more profit wich is why I say selling of internet connected devices and internet connection should be done to adults only. But don't force me to give companies all my personal data.
Fair enough. Social media is addictive and it’s the wild west for political radicalization. It should be restricted for kids whose brains are still developing. You can get devices anywhere. What you’re suggesting is like restricting lighter sales but not tobacco. Doesn’t work.
None of what you are saying is addressing the massive privacy violation of tracking everyone's internet habits and websites having a copy of your ID. Even if they are 100% responsible with your data, do you realize how often websites get hacked?
That is a whole other problem, kids need to have a tutor, mabe instead of putting money on business that will leak our data just to put fake barriers on a site we should put that money into helping the kids that are left to their own devices.
Why not both? We give out our personal data to strangers all the time. Nothing new just different application. Have you created an online account with the IRS or the DMV? Same thing. You verify your identify then encrypted data or tokens get sent to the site you’re accessing. There is a solution that I’m not paid enough to develop.
No never created an account wit IRS or DMV as I am not American. And fir all the bit leaks that happened recently I for sure don't want a company in charge of verifying people ID.
Well, your comment was generic of all ages. Not saying something along the lines of "16 year olds are intelligent enough to vote", which I would agree with.
We can just just lower the 18 to 16 and resume the same conversation. No need to be condescending, you're turning a misunderstanding into a disagreement
It doesn't have to (and shouldn't) be the social media company gathering that information but a third party verification system that doesn't save anything, just validates the age using a driver's license/form of ID. We can do this (we do it for military and veterans so companies can give them discounts) in the US already.
I can understand not wanting to give social media too much data on you, but honestly they probably already have it already. Especially on platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
If we're supposed to be protecting children (with all these stupid laws anyway), then let's actually do that instead of just pretending all these stupid restrictions we currently have actually work.
No, I don't think the cutoff should be 18 either but a parent or guardian being forced to validate a 14 year old's account for them might actually force them to engage with what their kid is doing online which I would consider a win.
It doesn’t have to (and shouldn’t) be the social media company gathering that information but a third party verification system that doesn’t save anything, just validates the age using a driver’s license/form of ID. We can do this (we do it for military and veterans so companies can give them discounts) in the US already.
Unless you have extremely strong laws around personal information, the financial incentive for any 3rd party to collect and sell that information will be too strong.
And if your 3rd party verifier is the government, then there will be equally strong pressure from law enforcement to collect that information.
I don't disagree. These things are definitely all connected to one another and will fall short if we don't fix user privacy laws in general.
The age is 13 for coppa and they are required to get their parents permission already. Also are people in other countries supposed to have a US ID now? If it isn't saved, couldn't you just copy your parent's ID while they aren't looking? This doesn't solve anything.
There is not really any check or balance preventing them from lying about their age to make an account. So no. They aren't being required to get their parents permission already. That's the point. COPPA is a toothless set of laws that doesn't enact consequences for parents or companies unless a person or entity with money intervenes.
Nah I don't want corpos to have even more information on me than they already have.
It's time for people to finally accept again that you can't shield kids from anything, especially if it seems forbidden and interesting.
Also if you really wanted to pick a verification age you would have to go with 25+. 18 years old are just legal 17 years old and 20 years are barely out of school and don't have any experience about anything. 30+ years are stuck in the system and 65+ simply don't care anymore.
Actually raise the verification age to 99+. No wait just ban social media for everyone, it sucks and is unhealthy, go tough grass or something.
So don’t have an age restriction for tobacco, or alcohol or strip clubs either cuz you can’t shield kids from anything? Got it.
Nice strawman you got there, but we weren't talking about those topics.
The topic was social media, try to keep up.
It’s absolutely relevant. Go back to your cave if you can’t understand that. It’s 2024. You have to think about digital restrictions the same way you think an out analog.
Do you know what the great thing about 2024 is? People actually understand that digital doesn't have the same restrictions as analog.
Applying those very same restrictions would be foolish seeing how it wouldn't work as well, or even at all.
Nuance is sometimes important in these topics, no matter how much you want to act like your bullshit argument actually holds any water for some overarching topic no one was talking about.
With the subtlety and nuance I’ve come to expect from someone clutching their pearls and yelling: “Won’t somebody think or the children!”
Do you know what the great thing about 2024 is? People actually understand that digital doesn't have the same restrictions as analog.
Applying those very same restrictions would be foolish seeing how it wouldn't work as well, or even at all.
Nuance is sometimes important in these topics, no matter how much you want to act like your bullshit argument actually holds any water for some overarching topic no one was talking about.
Just dont give internet connected devices to kids and your problems are solved. I would agree with company being forced to verify the age of a person before signing a internet contract. Don't give open access to internet to kids it's just like sending them anywhere in the world alone.
Put in a parental filter then. You are trying to ruin the accessibility of the internet. What is a person from another country going to do when they don't have a US ID or whichever country is trying this? The internet doesn't have regions and people will move on to seedier websites that aren't based in that country anymore. You can see that with the several states that banned porn without ID. Most porn sites are still available without ID and big names like Pornhub can easily be accessed with a VPN that kids are constantly being advertised about by YouTube ad-reads. Requiring ID won't make kids safer, it'll just make the internet a headache to use and a source of identity theft when websites get hacked.
Easy and cheap access to anonymous, private, libre, and freedom-respecting computing is the inaliable human right of all hackers and future hackers.
I shouldn't even need an email to sign up, why do you think I'm here?
Let's introduce a national digital id to stop the kids accessing shit online. And to ensure that we need to make it linked to ur government id.
Edit: spelling
Let's not be pieces of shit using "for the kids" to destroy basic privacy rights online.
But think of the children they must be protected we can't possibly expect parents to be responsible so the government must step in to ensure their safety.
Yeah there's no way that could go wrong or be exploited by unscrupulous actors. Maybe parents should actually parent their kids? Extreme, I know.
What could possibly go wrong. There definatly wouldnt be any authoritarian shit going on.
What about we introduce more control from teachers and parents about what devices kids have access to, and give them some supervision too while we're at it?
I propose we take all parents, line them up, and start slapping them in the face until they stop being so fucking stupid.
Alternatively, and more realistically, we accept that gen z and gen alpha are just lost causes and massively invest in schools so maybe in a couple of generations we can break the cycle of stupidity.
Lol as if these generations are doing anything different than they were doing before. Kids have always lied about their age to do adult things. Not saying it's healthy, just like it wasn't healthy for kids to get their older brother to buy cigs, but it's not a unique problem and these generations are far from a "lost cause".
I care less about whether kids are doing stupid things to their bodies. It's a problem when they do, of course. But when their sheer intellectual capacity is permanently crippled, that's a much worse thing for society.
That will never work. The people can't be trusted they must be controlled with an iron fist of justice and glory.
So people can't be trusted, but you want to give control of everything to one person/group? Sounds contradictory to me.
So every person can be identified on whatever sites they do whatever they post.
That's China. Not America
You could very easily build the system to perform the age check without logging it to the user's ID since the check only needs to be performed once to create an account and just block anyone without one from seeing any of the content.
Estonia has digital ID based services and they aren't China. In fact China despises them because they've made the cutting edge in digital public services without having to compromise citizen privacy, which makes China look even worse for going out of their way to invade citizen privacy when it isn't even necessary to offer the same safety measures and services.
Would you give your kids blank plane tickets for them to go anywhere in the world alone ?
I guess not, then don't give them a internet connected device without surveillance. It's YOUR responsibility to keep YOUR kids safe not mine. I don't want to be forced to give MY ID online for YOUR kids to be loose on the internet as much as I don't want to see your kids roaming alone anywhere they feel like.
