The former BC Liberal premier trashes his legacy for what? This needs a Logic Check.

If political science really was a science, and the people in lab coats tried to create the perfect political issue in the lab, the end result would look a lot like the R16 social media ban. Checklist: such a ban enables politicians to hold hands with worried parents; it allows governments to look like they care about social problems without needing to change their economic settings one iota; the inevitable failure to keep most kids off social media won’t count as failure; and finally, the only people who think an R16 social media ban is complete crap are people who can’t vote. And as an issue it is politically fool-proof. National is all for it. So is Labour, provided a few of its concerns around privacy and the monitoring progress on harm reduction are ticked off. Not because this will make the ban consistent with general principles of free speech and the Human Rights Act – it won’t – but because this issue scores really well in Labour’s focus groups, and in polling data. I’ve written at length here about why an R16 social media ban should be opposed: (a) it is wrong in principle (b) it is be more of a test of kids’ technical competence at avoiding the ban, rather than a shield for their vulnerability (c) it requires the state to assume powers that belong with parents (d) it commits serious privacy violations, since the ban requires children’s personal and biometric data to be handed over to third party companies for age verification purposes (b) it will fail because most kids can get around the ban e.g. with a VPN – and those who can’t are the kids most reliant on online services for their sense of community (c) it will do more harm than good (d) it will restrict access to positive material and valuable communication experiences online (f) it will undermine positive ways to teach kids how to safely navigate social media etc etc These comments by Mike Masnick on the Techdirt site seem relevant: _One of the biggest benefits of the Internet is the ability to talk to people outside your personal sphere. It’s similar to the exposure to diversity that a lot of people get when they leave home for college. You can see how a bunch of conservatives who are dismayed by their inability to control what the youth access and talk about would want to lock them out so they can be limited to the indoctrination of their immediate vicinity._ _Internet access helps LGBTQ kids when their parents are unsupportive hateful bigots. Internet access helps kids on the spectrum find other people who share their interests and won’t think they’re weird. Internet access helps kids who are being abused finds strategies to report and escape from those situations._ Social media age bans, as the developmental psychologist Candice Odgers recently explained, are also a form of victim blaming: _We’re kicking them out of the spaces they go to be with friends, to consume youth culture, and yes, sadly, many times to escape people that are harming them offline._.._So a social media ban might feel good for the adults in the room, but teens tell me, and I believe them — it’s not going to work._ _It’ll push them into less safe and less regulated spaces, and it will prevent us from doing what we really need to help them be well._ You’d think Labour would have given these matters more weight before angling to find ways to reap the political gains of signing onto this issue, alongside h National. To repeat: the R16 ban creates hair-raising privacy issues by handing over children’s personal and biometric information – ostensibly for age verification purposes – to third party companies and (potentially) to the same media platforms that are allegedly poisoning the minds of our kids with toxic content and addictive technologies. Usually, conservatives will rail against the state intruding in areas of parental responsibility. Not this time. The French Constitutional Council, in its ruling on the R15 law in France, made the telling point that such bans commonly limit the scope that parents have to decide what’s appropriate for their kids. As the French court also pointed out: _[… Neither the contested provisions nor any other provision sets out the conditions under which the holders of parental authority or the legal representative of the minor, duly informed of the potential risks and safeguards presented by the services concerned, may, in the child’s best interests and in the exercise of their duties under the law, decide to lift the prohibition, limit its scope or authorise access to certain services._ If only we cared as much about children living in poverty as we seem to care about the time they’re spending on Tiktok. BTW, most adults are pretty poor at modelling how to ration their screen time. Parents routinely binge-watch, and “ binge-worthy” is held to be a very positive adjective to apply to a new TV series. Yet often its the same adults who angst about kids being undisciplined about the time they spend online. ## Globalising it Around the developed world, politicians are finding that supporting an R16 ban puts them in a happy place with voters. The _New York Times_ has reported on the global popularity of bans and restrictions on children’s access to “socially addictive” forms of social media while -almost simultaneously – conceding that the bans don’t/won’t/can’t work as intended. Nine months after Australia launched the first R16 social media ban, the global backlash against this is now well under way, mainly because to repeat (a) such bans are easily circumvented and (b) there is evidence they may do more harm than good. A lasting solution to issues around kids having excessive screen time would require schools and yes, politicians – to fund ways of better equipping kids, parents and schoolteachers with techniques that promote howe to be safe online. Italian PM Giorgia Meloni shares some of the misgivings. While not personally against an R16 social media ban she has said that this measure alone was not enough to solve the problem “because this type of ban can easily be circumvented.” This can be either by use of a VPN, which is not forbidden under the Luxon administration’s draft bill – or with the help of an older sibling or friend. _“Stating that a ban [also] risks “to partially transfer the problem on families,” Meloni said restrictions can also be ineffective unless governments put more pressure on platforms to take action and to “take their responsibilities.”_ In France as mentioned, while President Emmanuel Macron endorsed legislation to create an R15 social media ban, France’s highest court has struck it down. _The Council_ _ruled_ _that the legislation banning under-15s from social media infringed on freedom of expression and communication in a manner that is not appropriate, necessary, or proportionate, which is required by Article 34 of the French Constitution. In particular, it stressed that the ban did not distinguish between different types of online services, and ignored the circumstances of individual users, such as their exact age, level of maturity, and family situation._ The past decade’s history of age-gating online content in Britain is well traversed here. ## Zuckerberg’s initiative To some extent, the ground is shifting under the whole idea of a R16 social media ban. Erica Stanford’s decision to defer the legislation until after the election and play for more time makes sense in the light of recent overtures by Meta’s Mark Zuckerbeg. Zuckerberg is trying to get in front of the issue, at least as far as his company’s products – Facebook and Instagram- are concerned. In essence, Zuckerberg has offered a $US 17 -18 billion package deal to settle a joint lawsuit brought on child safety grounds by all but two US states and territories, with respect to Facebook and Instagram. (New Mexico and Florida did not join the suit.) As part of the deal, Zuckerberg is offering restrictions that would significantly beef up the age-related content restrictions that currently exist on Meta’s platforms. These new provisions will phase in over the next decade. They include time limits, notifications, the use of algorithms, the banning of cosmetic filters etc. ## Meta’ Methods Briefly, Zuckerberg’s proposals include a number of innovations. Teens will be allowed to spend only two hours a day on Facebook/Instagram, although consenting parents can permit extra time. Young subscribers will also not be allowed to use the apps between midnight and 6am. Facebook/Instagram notifications will not occur during the 8am to 3pn school hours. Another innovation: the “Autoplay” function that delivers content automatically to kids will be able to be switched off, and young users will also be able to turn off their personalised algorithmic feeds. Prompts will appear every 15 minutes, every hour and every 90 minutes to alert users how long they’ve been online. The “Like” counts said to have a negative impact on self-esteem will also be able to be turned off, and young users will not be able to access “extreme makeup filters” and other features that mimic cosmetic surgery. In future Meta is also promising to provide (unspecified) extra protections against strangers being able to contact young users, and extra ways for teens to report harmful content, with a related promise to respond to 90% of such reports within six hours. As the _New York Times_ also added – _Meta agreed to maintain and improve the tools it offered parents to see how much time their children spent on the apps, what content they were searching and the kinds of contact they made with adults. Parents will be alerted when their children create new accounts or have interactions with accounts the company deems suspicious._ At present, Zuckerberg intends to make these provisions available only in the United States. Yet since he also wants to set the industry standards, the potential exists for an international rollout in due course. The more immediate problem is that Meta is no longer the key player in teen activities online, and hasn’t been for years. Facebook and Instagram have been described as virtual ghost towns. For most kids, YouTube and Tiktok are among the more popular/important locations. That’s one reason why Zuckerberg is making $5 billion of the Meta payout conditional on TikTok and YouTube implementing these same safety provisions. At time of writing, TikTok and YouTube were not commenting. If they do eventually agree, those platforms would stand to lose some of their competitive edge, an outcome that would enable Zuckerberg’s musty platforms to eventually claw back a greater share of the youth-related advertising revenue stream. In other words, Zuckerberg is not being altruistic. No surprise there. By making concessions to the pressure Meta has recently come under in the US courts, he is looking for a business advantage. As Bloomberg News has reported: _YouTube and TikTok will have more to lose because teens now use those apps for longer than they do Instagram and, it hardly needs pointing out, Facebook… It may well be that an hourly limit on YouTube, an app that 76% of US teens use at least once a day, with 17% saying they used it ‘almost constantly,’ might be a growth driver for the stagnant Facebook, where just 20% of US teens say they visit daily, according to_ _data from Pew Research_ _. Instagram might experience a similar boost. In that context, the 1% share-bump Meta experienced after announcing the settlement makes a bit more sense._ It makes sense for Erica Stanford to bide her time, until the dust settles on exactly how the social media giants may be willing to compromise with respect to their young users, globally.