Anybody willing to do a drill. Comms, check if it works, getting used to it... all the stuff

Cell phone and vape crackdown: $17.5 million

Anti-bullying: $4.6 million

Plus I'm pretty sure they only spent $4.6 million on anti-bullying because of backlash to their cell phone crackdown.

Tell Congress: KOSA Will Censor the Internet But Won't Help Kids | EFF Action Center

Going in places made for children and teens, purposefully making it unsafe by bullying, harassing, spreading 🌽, and bunch of other stuff. And then when actual kids call them out, they get angry and wonder why there are even kids in said place.

It's like all over social media. Even in Reddit. I've seen posts of mostly adults complaining and groaning about how Reddit is mostly teenagers, yet Reddit itself is 13+, so obviously there's going to be teenagers.

And then when you point this out to them, it's "we don't have many places for adult only conversation" YES THERE IS! Bars, clubs, 🌽 sites, Facebook, tiktok, insta, and there are tons of 18+ subs or subs that only let adults in.

You can even sign up for a coding class and make your own social media made only for adults. And them making it more for adults is inherently making more adults sign up and make accounts or whatever

I even see this on ROBLOX. ROBLOX. What even are these people expecting? 89 year olds? 40 year olds? World War 2 survivors?????

(And yes, I'm aware you can say porn on this sub. I just think it's more entertaining to say 🌽)

A spokesperson for the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said: “There are no current plans to implement a smartphone or social media ban for children."

Of course, if they were planning on a social media ban, they'd continue to make statements like this until literally the day they implemented the ban.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/nov/29/australia-social-media-ban-under-16s-uk-charities-children#:\~:text=A%20spokesperson%20for%20the%20Department,benefiting%20from%20the%20latest%20technology.

So, I looked at the Reddit news for the new social media ban (Which I never check Reddit news for anything lol) and read some of the posts. Most of the people were actually against the ban the last I checked. And it is really surprising.

A lot of Redditors have no clue on how age, psychology, and or really how anything in life works, so I was expecting most people to be with this bill and say some psuedo intellectual nonsense but no! People are against it and I'm glad!

Granted, I'm American (I hate the U.S by the way, but that's a whole nother post to write about), not Australian so take what I say with grain of salt.

However I think this bill won't solve anything. Pedophiles and groomers are just going to find more ways to harm and sexualize children. And tons of things like bullying, racism, grooming, and more were a thing before social media.

It just became more digitalized and more widespread since most people have internet. People like me who are stuck in abusive situations will have our voice unheard of and we will not find anyone to talk to.

I hate how they're acting like it's the phones fault and not society in general.

1. It's pretty weird how social media existed for 20 years and nobody suggested these laws, but suddenly the laws are in vogue now. That's actually pretty contrary to the previous panics over new things like rock n'roll and TV. Those panics were completely gone 20 years after those things were introduced.

2. I think that COVID lockdown measures are a large part of what's enabled these social media laws. If you want to think of one thing that's made these laws that would have seemed impossible in the 2010s be possible in the 2020s, it's COVID lockdowns. The lockdowns greatly increased government power and made governments think they could get away with doing a lot more tyrannical measures.

3. I dislike defending Big Tech, but the fact of the matter is that they're being held to some absurd moral standards that no other industry is held to.

For example, social media being "addictive" to minors. Well, your 3 year old's toy police car with flashing lights is meant to be addicting to him. Chocolate candy has all kinds of ingredients to be addicting to 5-10 year olds. Nickelodeon is meant to be addicting to 9-12 year olds.

Yet it's supposed to be hugely immoral that social media is meant to be addicting to 15 year olds.

4. This 16 age limit is insanely high. I can understand parents who don't want their kids under 12 or 13 on social media. (Although even there I think it should be a parental choice rather than a government choice.) But setting the age at 16? Seriously? And PS 16 is probably just a stopgap before they raise it to 18.

5. I'm sure that part of the reason for the bans is to get adult's IDs and track what they're posting online. But I get tired of how that's about 90% of what people who oppose these laws focus on. The even greater impact on people under 16 practically gets ignored.

6. Haidt and his ilk are really delusional if they think this will lead to kids playing unsupervised outside more. It's actually just going to further increase the perception that anybody under 16 is a baby who needs protection and they shouldn't be allowed alone outside.

The reason why Albanese passed the ban was because Dutton was threatening to make a social media ban for under-16s the center of the next Conservative campaign if Labor didn't pass it.

However, almost everybody seems to have forgotten about this. In fact, most news articles are outright referring to this as the Labor social media ban.

I think that Dutton pulled off a masterful con that Albanese fell for hook, line and sinker. I think that Dutton was actually trying to get Albanese to pass an unpopular piece of legislation that will be associated with Labor.

Somehow this story is only coming out in about the last 5-10 minutes even though the Senate meeting is supposed to have ended at 5 pm Canberra Australia time. (6.5 hours ago.)

They seem to have kept the Senate wayyyyy overtime just to get this bill through. I really had no idea that such a thing was allowed.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-28/social-media-age-ban-passes-parliament/104647138

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/28/world/asia/australia-social-media-ban-law.html

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-11-28/australia-senate-passes-world-s-first-social-media-ban-for-children-under-16

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna181124

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/nov/21/labor-social-media-ban-under-16s-details-what-is-covered-which-platform

Say our prayers about the Senate. They already killed the misinformation bill.

If it passes the Senate, then we'll say our prayers about a court challenge. Apparently Australia has some limited constitutional free speech right for political speech, and this ban would prevent (among other things) political speech.

https://apnews.com/article/australia-social-media-young-children-bf0ca2aedaf61b71fe335421240e94c4

Jesus Christ.

There (hopefully) shouldn't be much of a risk of Trump banning social media for teens as long as Elon Musk remains a force in his administration. But Trump is infamous for dumping a lot of his allies sooner or later, so there's a pretty good chance that he'll eventually dump Musk.

And even now, maybe Musk isn't as powerful as perceived if Trump is appointing this woman, presumably over Musk's objections.

On top of supporting the conservative type of social media censorship (raising the social media age to 16), Neshiwat also supported the type of liberal type of social media censorship. (Banning anymore who dissents from the COVID narrative from social media). I hope that the Senate will refuse to confirm her.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/11/26/trumps-surgeon-general-pick-called-banning-social-media-teens/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/11/26/trumps-surgeon-general-pick-called-banning-social-media-teens/

She had really insightful pro youth videos, but they dissappeared from YouTube and from Reddit.

From the first time I heard of the concept of youthlib, I was a supporter. But now it's personal. And now I want to actually do something.

Yesterday I kind of had a mental breakdown. I punched myself in the head multiple times hard. Like, my head was ringing afterwards. I just waited for it to stop and went downstairs like nothing was wrong. I don't trust my parents to know. They aren't, like abusive abusive. But I don't feel safe with them knowing about my mental health.

Today I went biking to go clothes shopping. I was on the way to the store when my head got this horrible feeling. It was like a combination of the pins and needles you get in your leg and bugs crawling on it. I was scared I had gotten a concussion from yesterday and decided to bike up to urgent care to get screened for one. They turned me away because I was underage and not accompanied by a guardian.

What the actual fuck?!?! Is it that unbelievable that a kid may not want their parents knowing about absolutely everything that happens to them? Oh, right, because kids are property. I want to make youthlib a reality now. How do I get involved? There's still a chance I might have a concussion and stupid ageist society won't help!

I heard a take that youth should have their own social media platforms, like have their own Instagram, Snapchat, etc.

I feel like youth should be able to share the internet with us adults, and adults should just regulate their content accordingly if they don’t want the youth to see it so bad. For example, I know you can limit your content on TikTok to only be viewed by users of age 18+. I know some apps/platforms don’t have settings like this, though.

How do y’all feel about this? Would love to hear from the youth on this subreddit!