An Angus Reid survey says three-quarters of more than 4,000 respondents are in favour of a ban like the one in Australia, where youth under 16 are prevented from setting up accounts on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and Threads.

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[–] howrar@lemmy.ca 3 points 4 hours ago

Something I see coming up a lot in this comment section is this question of how this would be enforced without the invasive age verification we're seeing in the US and UK.

My answer to that is that it should be enforced at the level of people posting content, along with some amount of self-policing. If you create events for kids under 16 as a Facebook event and ask them to RSVP through Facebook, then that's breaking the law. If you're a school sharing content for your students on these platforms, that would also be breaking the law. If the kids are aware enough of the problems with social media, then simply having a law in place is enough to steer some away from those platforms and convince others to join them. This also gives people an extra tool to point to when it comes to asking businesses to post their information somewhere other than Instagram.

If it can't be done that way, then it shouldn't be implemented.

I don't expect this to eliminate social media use altogether for kids in that age bracket. I do expect it to be an improvement, not just for the kids, but also for us adults who don't want to be forced to use these platforms.