As many of you will be aware, the Australian government is trying to ban children under the age of 16 from using social media.
Banning children from social media is like banning them from going in the water. We'd be far better off teaching them to "swim"; educate them on the dangers of social media and how to be safe and protect their privacy online so they have the skills they need to navigate the water/online world.
Young queer and trans kids and other marginalised people (for example, people of colour and people with disabilities) need support and information, which is often difficult or outright dangerous for them to get from people in their lives but which is available from communities online. Cutting them off from that will put them at risk of further isolation and harm (which, sadly, is likely the main point of these laws being introduced).
And this won't just affect teenagers. It's not like social media companies can only ask teenagers to provide proof of age, they'd have to ask EVERYONE to do it. Which means facial recognition and/or uploading formal identification. This obviously has colossal privacy/safety implications. In this day and age it's not a matter of if our data will be stolen but when, so all adults are in danger of harm from these laws, but vulnerable populations (gay, trans, folks with medical issues, people who have/had an abusive partner/family member etc) are even more at risk. Not just because they're more likely to be targeted in the first place, but they're also more likely to be harmed if their private details are made public. So their only options are to either risk being doxxed or just cut themselves off from their online support groups/mechanisms (which again may be the only support they have).
As a writer and artist, I'd also be remiss in not mentioning the impact this is likely to have on creative people. Unlike for a lot of other occupations, we almost have to use social media to advertise our work. Whether it's photography, writing, art, music or anything else, it's incredibly difficult to get eyes on our work because (leaving aside the very few big/famous names in the industry), we can't get other people to advertise for us. If we want our stuff marketed, we have to do it ourselves, and even if we have a dedicated website, that doesn't mean much if people don't know to look for it. For a lot of writers and artists, social media is THE main way they get the word out about their books or their new art for sale, and often one of the most practical way for them to solicit commissions that help them put food on the table. If Australian creatives are forced to upload their identification in order to access these sites, will they do it? Sure, some will... but as above, many will justifiably decide it isn't worth the risk, and they will just stop using social media. As a result, writing or art will stop being financially viable for those people and there's a good chance they'll either revert to only doing it as an occasional hobby, or they'll be forced to take on more 9-5-esque jobs that leave little time and energy for creativity at all. This sucks for the individual artists, but also sucks for Australia's creative industry.
From a practical standpoint, banning YouTube means also banning Google... which is used in a huge number of schools for student collaboration and accessing learning resources, so... RIP that too, I guess? Hope all those teachers are going to be paid overtime for having to rewrite lessons and curriculums because the kids won't be able to access those educational videos anymore... (lol, like they even get paid enough in the first place)
Also, like with a lot of other "prohibitions", those who want to get around the ban will probably find a way anyway (at the risk of further punishment), so not only does the ban have the potential to harm young people, it's also unlikely to actually protect them.
On a similar note, kids are going to keep bullying each other regardless of whether they have social media or not. Without Facebook or whatever, the bullies will just continue with good old-fashioned name-calling and schoolyard assault they were already doing in addition to the online bullying, because teachers won't do anything to stop it either way (partially because they're under-resourced but also because, let's be honest, a lot of them just don't give a fuck). On top of that, students who are ostracised in school may have built up friend networks online, so taking that away from them will do even more harm.
So not only will this ban introduce a whole heap of new problems, it won't even solve the ones it's supposed to. But this is what happens laws around technology are made by people who probably think a floppy disk is cutting edge and that "all the cool people" are using MySpace.
[this post was constructed from rants I have made previously on various social media sites]
No comments:
Post a Comment