Im confused about labours social media ban for under 16s? (Kinda random)

PetiteQuark

So ive heard about this social media ban coming up for under 16s. And im wondering if I created a social media account when I was 15 but I am over 16 now would I still get suspended?
I even made a google account and a yt channel when i was 15 but I never uploaded anything until i was 16 would I still get suspended?

Azziman

Hey @PetiteQuark, good question - there's been quite a few headlines about this, so it's good to clear this up.

Australia is the country that's going to be implementing a social media ban for under 16s, not the UK! The UK government has mentioned the idea, but they're intending to conduct more research into the matter to better understand impacts and what to do. It's not a concrete policy or idea by any means in the UK, so you won't be impacted by this news based on the current situation.

If the UK did decide to implement it in the future, it'd outline how this would work and what the impacts would be, and I'd imagine that the social media companies would notify you as well. But no changes are happening now, so you don't need to do anything. Hope that clears this up!

Faolan

I don’t understand how this would even be possible with how easy it is to just lie about your age😅

PetiteQuark

Faolan wrote: »

I don’t understand how this would even be possible with how easy it is to just lie about your age😅

Honestly theyre implementing id checks apparently to find out users real age. Tbf i feel like social media has positives and negatives i dont even use social media that much apart from YouTube and to message my friends who dont live near me and i dont see them at college often. I used to have a science blog which I made when I was in year 7 or year 8 ( i forgot when exactly?) but I haven't updated it since like, january or February this year, just not enough time now.

I also feel that social media is basically like some sort of 'bogeyman'? Like everything is blamed on it and not finding out the root causes like for me social media barely caused any problems, maybe actually none for me?
Because most of my problems came from bullying throughout secondary school, constantly moving, lack of control, parents not wanting to well, treat me like a 16/17 year old, not being allowed to go to after school classes, family problems, invalidation, infantillisation college being awful and not being allowed to even 'look' upset. Oh yeah and i have other health problems that make me in pain and im sure as hell social media didnt cause any of those lol. Its getting a bit dumb like im turning 18 soon now lol

Faolan

Jeez who has time for that @PetiteQuark 😂 sure like you said it has its upsides like we can use it to keep in touch with friends and make connections. It’s stupid that it’s being treated as the universal scapegoat.

You’re right it’s like the bogeyman lol. Before social media, people blamed magazines for setting unrealistic standards and before that it was TV, Radio, books.. there’s always some bogeyman to point fingers at instead of addressing the deeper issues lol

And tbh from my experience it’s the adults who need banning from the internet. They’re the weirdos hanging out in the dodgier corners of the web and there’s been endless amounts of times an actual fully grown adult has argued with me on tiktok because I’ve called out their crappy behaviour 💀 😂

Amy22

Faolan wrote: »

I don’t understand how this would even be possible with how easy it is to just lie about your age😅

I also thought about this too actually to be fair because it is quite easy to lie about your age online especially on social media, you can just tweak the date of birth thing on there and bam your over 16!. I think the UK were looking into it at one point but I dont think they may actually pass a law on it just yet.