I’m asking for public policy ideas here. A lot of countries are enacting age verification now. But of course this is a privacy nightmare and is ripe for abuse. At the same time though, I also understand why people are concerned with how kids are using social media. These products are designed to be addictive and are known to cause body image issues and so forth. So what’s the middle ground? How can we protect kids from the harms of social media in a way that respects everyone’s privacy?
Some of it can be accomplished by just setting universal demands for how social media works for all users:
Stuff like that. These kinds of regulations don’t involve ID checks, and could take care of a big chunk of the problem.
This doesn’t solve the problem at the core of social media. The inevitable comparison of fake lives on impressionable children/teens has been shown to cause depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideations. There is nothing that can be done algorithm or advertising wise that would stop that from happening.
If you do the 1st one, then most companies likely wouldn’t bother with such algorithms anymore.
The ban target advertising would definitely be a more realistic solution than banning advertisements in general (which some people are advocating for here). I really am not a fan of ads and would love if they were banned, but I understand that it’s not politically realistic due to what a large role they play in our economy.
Wut.
I should have been more clear. I mean banning advertising in general would not be realistic, so a ban on targeted advertising is a more realistic alternative