zlacker

>>Shamar+(OP)
It's good to see that many countries are working on lesiglation to protect children and teens against this, since the companies clearly aren't trying.

>>sagaci+77
American tech corps act like cigarette companies but we're still at the point where banning them for kids is considered weird, fringe and even dangerous. Crazy.

>>mikkup+R8
The general problem is that nobody actually needs cigarettes but communication is fundamental to the human experience. How do you even propose to define "social media" in a way that can distinguish between it and any other public forum for discussion?

The actual problem is not that kids are using group communications technology, it's that the network effect in public interaction has been captured by private companies with a perverse incentive to maximize engagement.

That's just as much of a problem for adults as for teenagers and the solution doesn't look anything like "ban people from using this category of thing" and instead looks something like "require interoperability/federation" so there isn't a central middle man sitting on the chokepoint who makes more money the more time people waste using the service.

>>Anthon+zn
> but communication is fundamental to the human experience.

Humans survived well before the internet, the telephone, the telegraph, or even international post.

>>dylan6+0o
In those days they did this by having physical public spaces for interaction, which we've since priced people out of through artificial scarcity of real estate via zoning laws. And even if people were willing to solve that one, it would take time to actually build new buildings, and doing that would have to be done first.

It's also assuming that we're willing to abandon a technological capacity (not having to personally travel to someone's location to communicate with them) that humans have had since before Moses came down from the mountain, which seems like a fairly silly constraint to impose when there are obviously better alternatives available.