Under-16s will be banned from using social media, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced.

Starmer says social media is making children unhappy, making it easier for bullies to abuse children, and is “designed to be addictive”. A ban would give children more time, security, and more freedom to grow up - as well as more opportunities, he adds.

“That is all any parent wants. They want to know that Britain will be better for their children, that they will get a fair chance,” the PM says in a speech in Downing Street.

Starmer adds that the government is “not prepared to compromise” on the safety and happiness of children - and that includes in the regulation and enforcement of this ban. He says the government has listened to and learned from countries like Australia, where a similar ban has already been introduced.

  • GoatSynagogue@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

    You’ll have to use it to express your opinions online. That’s the problem, and the whole point of it. They government want to know exactly what every person says on the internet.

    • ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net
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      11 hours ago

      My country had digital ID for 20 years. You’re saying they introduced it only to force age verification decades later? Because they want to do age verification using the EU proposed method, not using our digital IDs.

      • Avicenna@programming.dev
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        9 hours ago

        Why does it have to be originally introduced with oppression in mind? Why not realize it provides a nice framework for it and use it instead? US toyed around with the idea of ID verification for anything that connects to internet. It is probably not going so smoothly. This could as well be a smaller experiment. We are talking about a goverment that jails eighty year olds for saying free palestine, not hard to imagine them wanting to do the same in the internet. It is crazy how far rabid zionist lobies can push goverments into oppressing their citizens.

        • ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net
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          9 hours ago

          Many things can be used for online identification and oppression, for example credit cards or cellphones. Why singe out digital ID? Are you going to fight against credit cards and cellphones as well or just digital ID?

          • Avicenna@programming.dev
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            4 hours ago

            Neither credit cards nor cellphones can not be used for the particular kind of oppression mentioned in my post definitely not en masse. They definitely can not be as efficient as ID verification for any kind of oppression. So cellphones and credit cards actually add some value to your life while NOT being very efficient oppression tools. ID verification won’t add anything to your life while harboring capacity for being a very efficient oppression tool. Bad apps in cellphones can violate alot of aspects of your privacy but still not nearly as efficient as a goverment having direct access to online activity tied to a digital ID. So your examples aren’t really relevant.

            • ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net
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              1 hour ago

              You’re just scaremongering. You’re equaling digital ID (which is a very useful tool) with universal online ID verification. Those are not the same things. You can have digital ID without mass ID verification (like I do) and you can have age and ID checks without digital IDs (like in UK). It’s like being against law enforcement because police is used to create police states. Yeah, it’s hard to create a police state without police but not every country with police is a police state.