I cannot in any way see this as a net positive. Sure, kids are distracted from sleep, they view media that is damaging and shitty, they get dopamine levels fucked up. But for some teenagers, especially at 15-18, that is also their only way to communicate and cope with abuse and maliciously bad parenting, or bad early relationships.
Me, at that age, had digital ”social” communication as a vent. I don’t know if I’d still be here without it.
I grew up in a hyper conservative family in a super conservative part of southern Indiana. Even with the remote contacts I made online via BBS, IRC, forums, etc; I was still a quasi-suicidal (and incredibly closeted) atheist and bisexual. If I hadn't had some kind of community to which I could vent some of my frustrations I'm very confident I would have done myself in. I even met my wife over IRC when we were teenagers.
And, weird as it is to say, if the price of my mental health and training in what would eventually become my profession is that I occasionally had people trying to trick me into looking at goatse..... show me that horror anus.
They justify it as being just a change in the default settings and therefore reversible (despite most people not changing default settings), but I don't trust them not to tighten the screws of the Online Safety Act further as time goes on.
You can leave school at 16, get a job that requires you get up at 4am, and you can't even check the 'gram on your way to work.
What a country!
Good job timezones don't exist and nobody goes abroad, ever.
It's not about "protecting" the children, it's about the governments protecting themselves by making the next generation less rebellious by keeping them less informed about all the shit happening around the world because of laws made by assholes to allow them to do whatever they want.
Just when you think it cannot get any worse smh
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