alt Hacker NewsIn my current EU country, there's mandatory military conscription from the age of 17. And you're telling me you're only fit for social media access one year before being fit to drive tanks and shoot guns at people?
Look, I hate (Zuckerberg's) social media just as much as the next person and I would be happy if it were nuked from this planet, but firstly, a lot of this sudden age verification shit to "protect the children" is sus AF, leading me to assume their ulterior motives are surveillance and doxxing of anonymous online free speech, and secondly, I don't think we can put the toothpaste back in the bottle anymore similar how prohibition didn't stop alcohol consumption, it just moved underground.
As long as kids have smartphones, they'll find a way to use social media, or even make their own social media to organize parties, send nudes or flaunt their parents' wealth and bully the poor and ugly kids, the same way how they start drinking beer at 13 even though the legal age for that is 18.
Social media amplifies the worst of human nature, but you won't be able to change human nature. Maybe governments should regulate the amount and type of data collection social media companies can have from their users, instead of regulating their users.
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> In my current EU country, there's mandatory military conscription from the age of 17. And you're telling me you're only fit for social media access one year before being fit to drive tanks and shoot guns at people?
Well, that's kinda already the norm isn't it? In the US I'm allowed to go risk my life in the military but not allowed to order a beer with my pizza. It already makes no sense.
In most EU countries, children of farmers can drive 10 ton death machines with pointy spikes on the front from the age of 14 to 16. In some countries you can even do that on public roads!
> In my current EU country, there's mandatory military conscription from the age of 17. And you're telling me you're only fit for social media access one year before being fit to drive tanks and shoot guns at people?
FWIW, in the UK you can learn to drive a tank one year before you're allowed to learn to drive a car. Not go into combat, that's another year, I just mean the learning to drive part.
Back when I myself was that age, I also got a letter published in a national newspaper pointing out the oddity that I was allowed to have sex two years before being allowed to look at photos of other people doing so. Since then, cheap cameras would also make it pertinent (though it was true even back then), that I could not have taken photos of myself performing acts I was allowed to perform.