Australia's Social Media Ban: As ever, "safety" is reduced to punishing the most vulnerable.
You know we live in a depraved, malevolent world when we come to equate safety with punishing and restricting the most vulnerable. Just like it is the fault and responsibility of women for venturing into the wrong parts of town, wearing the wrong clothes, and subsequently getting raped and harassed, the atrocious and perverted materials circulating online have now been made the burden of those most vulnerable and blameless among us, our children.
I doubt anyone sane can argue in favor of Australia's social media ban. I myself have tried several times, and while i recognize the Internet (and social media, in particular) is rapidly devolving into a very dangerous place, I can't wrap my head around how restricting (what is now an essential) freedom is fighting that danger.
Is social media toxic? As fuck. Especially for the young. Impossible beauty standards, intense bullying, dangerous challenges, and of course, malicious agents, have cooperated to create a decidedly unsafe time to be alive and young.
And I get it. Faced, as many parents are, with the possibility of their child being exposed to sexual manipulation, swallowing Tidepods, suicidal ideation, toxic concepts over their self-worth... it rapidly spirals into something we feel overwhelmed by. Something we'd give anything to prevent.
It's the same cruel assault on parents that we saw with the push for gender surgery until recently. Rather than have your child kill themselves because they can't express their "true identity", you'll go along with anything, right? Same here. Rather than have my kid exposed to online bullies, perverts, or other perils, I'll go to any lengths to ensure their safety.
Makes sense. The only question is... why are we so keen on assuming safety is out of our hands by default and requires a third-party, state-wide enforcer?
Surely, we should be focusing on teaching our children that the world is, by default, filled with ever-evolving peril. True freedom (and safety, implicitly) lies in learning how to navigate these perils, not hide from them.
Yes, social media is dangerous. But so is stepping out your front door. Parents thirty years ago had to contend with the risk of children being stolen off the street, massacred, and trashed inisde a dumpster. Pretty graphic, horrific stuff (as, surprise surprise, we are not actually the first generations to invent malevolence and atrocity). And yet, nobody in 1995 was saying let's restrict children from going outside.
As long as my safety hinges on a restriction of my freedom, I am neither safe nor free. I am just a carefully watched slave, and that's precisely what Australia is producing now, its very own first generation. "World-first", as many European papers are describing this atrocity. God help us.
Because we sure as shit don't seem interested in helping ourselves, if we're even open to considering restricting access to information and knowledge. On the one hand, I can see the appeal. I'm tempted to buy into a better tommorow where children up to 16 will have time to devote to other, more intellectual and artistic pursuits. It'd certainly be a nice thought, except when's the last time the government - any government - was concerned with facilitating intellectual, artistic pursuits? (Least of all despotic Australia)
The trouble with this idealism is, kids will still be surrounded by us. Their older peers, parents, teachers, randos on the subway will all still be glued to their TikToks, rotting their brains, and learning to justify their worth via followers and little empty hearts. With these as mentors, it is extremely unlikely the kids of tomorrow will really pass all this newfound time in higher-end pursuits.
My 17-year-old brother made this argument recently while discussing the ban, something that, as a denizen of the world wide web, he's greatly concerned about. While in many ways we are seeing the rise of dangerous idleness and superficiality in our young, we're also looking at a very mature and self-aware new generation, something that we have the Internet and social media to thank for.
On the other hand, more dangerously by far, restricting a child's access to such a wealth of information for the first (extremely formative) 16 years of their life is irresponsible, bordering on criminal.
The world will not change simply because we ban our children from it. Information will still be overwhelmingly digital. So will interaction and social connection. As a plethora of psychological studies have shown us already, a feeling of social disconnection and ill-belonging is laying the ground for psychopathy, erratic behaviour, mania, and depression.
This is not something we should be playing with. And while 15 years from now, should this malevolent, horrific ban still be in place, young people may think differently, current generations who grew up on the Internet until 6,8,13, however old they may now be, will undoubtedly register this as a horrible, unfeeling act of ostracism.
God help us.
You will learn how to hide, how to begin
You will learn how to print what no censor lets in
I can only hope so.
I'm not normally one for two posts in a day, but I do think today marks an important, tragic loss in the fight for digital freedom.
The exact thing happened over here in Malaysia as they copied Australia verbatim. I posted about this a few times, it has nothing to do with "protecting children" as they call it. The real agenda is to KYC every social media user, and knowing their reputation of what these companies do with our personal data and the history of data breaches involving them, what could possibly go wrong.
I missed that, I admit, though then again, I don't think that's accidental. They're careful about what they mediaticize, aren't they? It's the first (and a very dangerous) step towards digital ID enforcement and complete digital control.
When did our safety and protection fall out of our own jurisdiction?
In no way this is accidental. It started with the social media licensing requirements, DNS redirect and the online safety bill that passed last year and the "ban" being the latest move recently. I don't think you missed it as you voted on the post.
Governments around the world are also now pushing their digital ID apps to be pre-installed on every new phone together with the long list of uninstallable bloatware. Here it has already been integrated into practically every government service (i.e. phasing out physical ID and mandating the use of the digital ID for authentication of government and telco apps).
Ah yes. I must've just forgotten then, thank you for reminding me. I thought you meant a more recent post I'd missed, as I didn't remember seeing one from you lately.
I expect eventually, physical IDs will disappear entirely and the choice will be made simple - as long as you want to continue existing and benefitting from society, you must bend the knee.
I think my biggest issue with the whole thing is the way the companies are using the algorithms to target kids. There are always going to be bad people doing bad things and you can't throw out everything just because of a few people, but the corporations are doing it on a whole different level. I'm more of an educate versus ban sort of guy, but again the companies are stacking the deck.
I am glad I grew up before social media was invented! I don't feel like I missed out on anything because of no computers or internet, either. We learned to research using books from the library, and we read the newspaper, and we talked to adults to learn more about stuff we didn't understand. No Facebook existed on which to display one's intelligence, ignorance, humor, cruelty, or compassion. Our classmates, family, teachers, and church friends knew us for what we were, and the entire world didn't need to know all the details. Life was simpler.
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STOPThe levels of malevolence and atrocity in the world have not really increased; they simply wear different garments. It has always been the family’s responsibility to educate the youngest at home, and schools… well, there is much to be said about this, because one cannot teach in an archaic way when society is already moving along other paths, which may or may not be more evolved… depending on how they are viewed.
I will look at the news about it to see what is being said… thank you for the information.
Hello from down under! No rational Australian wanted this. The "duly elected" officials rushed this legislation through without give adequate considerations to the hundreds of submissions of thr general public, organisations, and people who have thoughts far more articulate on this matter than I.
Theres a great summary of this (and many other humorous survival horror style videos) like the below in existence, but this one sums it up best:
Thank you! I love this kind of video and it's important to watch these. Insane how so many people here are just going about life and totally ignoring what's going on "down under". As though it's isolated.