win2k

I wish those parents would just setup controls on their kids' smartphones and block social media apps for them instead of forcing everyone else to give their ID.

I think this is an unhealthy and unhelpful attitude. While I oppose the government banning it, I still believe children should be kept off of social media until they are mature enough, which can vary from child to child. There are plenty of dangers of social media: addiction, AI-generated propaganda, and bullying being a few.

It's your kids though so it's your decision. Just giving my take.

I wonder if a ban on YouTube means a ban on kids watching YouTube or just having an account.

If it's the former, then many schools use YouTube for educational purposes and set their kids homework that involves watching it. My old school sent us YouTube videos to watch on WW2 during the lockdown.

If it's the latter, what happens when YouTube flags your IP as suspicious and demands you "sign in to confirm you're not a bot"?

The truth is the vast majority of British citizens (70%+) support this. Actually, support for the Online Safety Act went up in the year after it was implemented. People you talk to online are not representative of public opinion as a whole. British society is very pro-"protecting children", which is what this is advertised as.

A lot of old people think a social media ban will bring back the good old days of their childhood where kids went outside. A lot of parents don't want to tell their kids "no" to social media because of "peer pressure", instead of just telling their kids to find better friends.

Only a small proportion of the population recognises this is about control. No major political party will speak out against this as they know being against it is a vote loser.

I'm on Firefox and it did nothing for me. The popup came up so fast between me refreshing and hitting escape.

Alternatively, you can disable JavaScript on the website. That lets me view it.

Babylon Bee forces you to accept cookies to use their site. Worth avoiding.

Shows a lot of people haven't read the article and just made assumptions based on the headline.

Oh. Racism.

I'm so relieved I left social media. Sadly, via democracy, even if you leave social media you are still impacted by those who use it and believe what they read.

Can you explain for the non-terminally online?

Screen time and social media definitely have an impact on attention spans, but it's worth pointing out for Mathematics, 2023's average is higher than pre-1990, and reading averages seem to have always been in the 255-265 range.

Yeah, you'd think from this that it is running Linux on Windows 9x.