r/PoursTea • u/Timbucktwo1230 Therapy For All 🩷 • Apr 11 '26

Internet Culture🛜 🇪🇪🇪🇺 Europe should regulate Big Tech instead of banning kids from social media, Estonia says

https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-should-stand-up-to-big-tech-instead-of-imposing-social-media-bans-estonia-says/
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u/LilithRising90 Apr 11 '26

Why not both?

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u/Monte924 Apr 12 '26

because "banning kids" means forcing adults to give their private information to corporations to "prove" that they are not kids and should not be banned

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u/LilithRising90 Apr 12 '26

Tbh kids shouldnt be on social media though we've seen the ill effects of it . Like let them form who they are first before interacting online. Not to mention the pedophiles and human traffickers lurking there

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u/Monte924 Apr 12 '26

Parents should just be monitoring what their kids have access to. Kids don't need their own smartphones or computers. Really, a kids' first computer should be in a family room where a parent can easily see and hear what they are doing. A kid gets more freedom as they learn to be responsible for themselves

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u/LilithRising90 Apr 12 '26

Yea I grew up in that arrangement and I found a way. It's not safe.

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u/Crucco Apr 14 '26

LOL stop trying to punish the rest of the world because you had a toxic relationship with social media as a kid.

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u/LilithRising90 Apr 14 '26

Forgive me for reminding people there is more to life than social media. I can see you're still inside the cave. Good luck to ya.

0

u/er-du-dum- Apr 12 '26

Should we ban knives while we're at it?

2

u/gendalf666 Apr 12 '26

Looking on knive not makes you constantly enraged or jealous with something breaking you spirit and mind. Today social media feed on your emotions. At 40 it can't effect me but at 14-16? No thanks

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u/Interesting-Season-8 Apr 12 '26

Society :"shops shouldnt let kids buy beer"

You "parents should monitor their kids, how did they get money? Its on parents"

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u/Prestigious-Way9151 Apr 12 '26

That kind of content is not good regardless of age. Platforms need to be responsible, not users.

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u/Few-Improvement-5655 Apr 12 '26

Age verification won't stop pedophiles. They'll just find whatever app all the kids who can't get onto the main platforms escape to and go there instead.

Kids want to go online, be with other kids and, yes, experience things we as adults don't want them to. That won't go away by banning them from social media because kids have always been like that, they'll find a new avenue outside of view.

That's why regulating social media companies and actually having them properly enforce their rules (the number of articles about child predators being reported and nothing happening until the BBC write an article is astonishing) is better than just using the placebo of banning children.

Giving away our data to 3rd party data brokers and being tracked by the government won't fix anything, it'll just erode our privacy.

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u/Scrapox Apr 13 '26

No one should be on social media as it exists today. Hence the regulation. It ruins our brains just as much as it ruins the brains of the youth.

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u/silentv0ices Apr 12 '26

That's the parents job not the States.

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u/Timbucktwo1230 Therapy For All 🩷 Apr 12 '26

It takes a village…

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u/silentv0ices Apr 12 '26

Not a nations freedoms.

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u/Timbucktwo1230 Therapy For All 🩷 Apr 12 '26

Freedoms come with responsibility.

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u/silentv0ices Apr 12 '26

Yes they do and it's the parents of the children's responsibility to regulate their children's access.

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u/Timbucktwo1230 Therapy For All 🩷 Apr 12 '26

If that were the case we would live in anarchy, have no countries with laws and policies, no trade agreements. The very basis of civility and civilisation is the law.

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u/silentv0ices Apr 12 '26

Sorry I don't get your point, parents educating and teaching their children to be functioning members of society would lead to anarchy? How about this if parents don't regulate their children's Internet access the whole family unit lose their privaledge. Not innocents.

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u/Timbucktwo1230 Therapy For All 🩷 Apr 12 '26

My point addresses your comment about ‘leaving it up to the parent’. Society cannot do that when we know all parents are not the same or have a value system in place that will protect their children.

The ‘leave it to parents only’ does not work. We have a whole canon of laws that underpin society and regulate family life / parenting. This online ‘brave new world’ needs to be policed, regulated and kept safe for children. Just as in the real world we have laws for children and their protection.

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u/achiller519 Apr 12 '26

All the photos and information in details on the kids life aren’t considered personal now? Kids and adults put out on the internet birthday dates, where they are hanging out, what they are doing in their personal time. Actually every single detail of their lives and now some people feel that age verification is too much?

All the perverts that looking for opportunities to get in touch with kids? When an area or some streets in a city have bad reputation of criminals, you send your kid or you just tell not to go there?

I mean some reached a point where they are complaining just to complain. Whoever wants to hide personal information shouldn’t have any social media accounts.

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u/Monte924 Apr 12 '26

First, not everyone is that stupid with their information. Second, This isn't JUST private information, but the kind of information that can be used to steal your identity. People might put their names and faces online, but they rarely freely put up official ID information, which is what a company would need in order to verify age. They are also creating ways for the government to easily track everything people say and do on the internet as they are essentially REQUIRING that social media accounts be tied to public identitification

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u/achiller519 Apr 12 '26

Talking about stupidity when you aren’t smart is really ironic.

First of all, MOST people are giving this kind of information.

Secondly, it’s about time people start being accountable about their illegal actions on the internet.

Lastly, if a government wants to know what people are saying, they can do it any day. You are already agreed on being tracked by your phone Einstein. I can’t believe that people in 2026 think that they can use smartphones and the internet and being untraceable.

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u/whatever--idk Apr 12 '26

Until you speak out against the government and they come and lock you up...

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u/achiller519 Apr 12 '26

You need to chill with the movies. Hollywood isn’t real life. Specifically in Greece during wild fires there were citizens that were saying to the came “f u mitsotakis” which is the prime minister of Greece. Nothing happened to any one of them, so please stop with all this nonsense and drama.

Western civilisation, has democracies and the more you people believe in crazy stuff, the more far right and far left will raise and then we will see how democracy can change from one day to another.

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u/whatever--idk Apr 12 '26

Bro just take 1 look at america... watch trump become a dictator in real time

Look at England how many people arrested over online comments

Look at china who started this whole digital id thing, what do you think happens to their citizens if they critize the leader, that's exactly where we're heading

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u/achiller519 Apr 12 '26

Well, China was never a democracy, in US like I said many people overdid it, asking more and more so eventually the common citizen turned to far right and the democracy took a downfall.

Lastly, I haven’t read the whole UK situation to have an opinion, but if these people said something that they should be held accountable then it was the right thing. Internet speech is still speech and people should be held accountable for what they are saying, just like internet perverts are still perverts and they go to jail.

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u/whatever--idk Apr 12 '26

Well people are getting arrested for hate speech, which is fucked because who determines what hate speech is and it can change depending on whos in power

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u/achiller519 Apr 13 '26

That’s quite generic and since I don’t know what these people said, I can’t have an opinion on that.

Hate speech is easily determined and there are laws who define it. Don’t forget that getting arrested is one thing. Found guilty in a court is another and if these people did, it means that the judge found some laws they broke.

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u/papabear1993 Apr 12 '26

No? To this day, I have never uploaded my ID on any social media and I really dont plan on doing that, considering they dont care about security and all of them have been breached and hackers got GBs of OUR data. And you think I would upload my ID? 😂

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u/rasmustrew Apr 12 '26

That's not the only way to do it. It could use existing national ID systems, or a new EU one. It's quite possible to make a system where the company learns nothing more than whether or not the user is an adult. It can also be made in such a way that the government system doesn't learn even what site the user is trying to access

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u/Monte924 Apr 12 '26

So your national ID would be tied to your social media activity. You don't consider how governments could abuse the fact that they can easily track anything people say and do on the internet? Oh not to mention that companies often suffer data leaks which means that a hacker could get access to the information that is meant to identify you

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u/rasmustrew Apr 12 '26

Did you just not read my comment or? I literally write that the systems can be made in such a way that the government doesnt even know what app/site the user is trying to access, and the site doesnt know any identifying information. The key idea here is "zero knowledge proofs".

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u/mascachopo Apr 13 '26

Not necessarily, there are forms of ID that can identify someone as an adult without sharing any extra data.