Australia Has Fallen

Or, "Et Tu, Australia?"

Australia recently passed a sweeping new law setting a binding legal age limit of 16 for at least most social media.  It will take full effect in one year from its passage.  And aside from their notably illiberal and draconian measures during the Covid pandemic (and the fact that they were of course descended from a penal colony), this kind of thing is quite out of character to say the least for a country that has long prided itself on being relatively free-spirited and is quite famous for the saying and attitude of "no worries, mate". 

Mike Males wrote an excellent Substack article from a youth rights perspective, discussing just how wrong and harmful it is for the state to do that to young people.  And we at Twenty-One Debunked agree with him.  But even if you the reader don't agree with him, and are smug about this law perhaps appeasing the illiberal and ageist social-mediaphobes in charge, consider this: it will NOT stop there.  Mark my words, the moment they see that their voodoo didn't really work, they will triple down and expand the restrictions, tighten the age verification requirements, and/or keep increasing the age limit higher and higher.  And this will also backfire on adults as well, endangering everyone's civil rights way beyond anonymity, given the privacy and cybersecurity pitfalls inherent to ALL forms of online age verification that would be even modestly effective. 

What should be done instead is what we have long advocated, as has the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF):  a "Privacy First" approach, that is, comprehensive data privacy legislation for ALL ages, which, at a minimum, bans surveillance advertising as well as "dark patterns" and other similarly deceptive and ethically questionable practices.  That will throw the proverbial One Ring into the fire for good.  But of course, Big Tech would NOT like that.

Also, simply adding more "friction" would also make such platforms safer and less addictive overall.

So what are we waiting for?

P.S. Australia has never had any equivalent to America's Section 230, so the fact that they saw the need to "get tough" on social media companies implies that they had just as much of a problem as the USA.  Thus, outright repeal of Section 230 (as opposed to much more nuanced and narrow reforms in regards to personalization of feeds and algorithms) as some ignorant social-mediaphobes have suggested would solve absolutely nothing, and would do far more harm than good. Don't do it!  You have been warned.

UPDATE:  Pari Esfandiari also wrote a great essay about how such a ban will do more harm than good.

Excellent New Insights From Renowned Sociologist and Youth Rights Activist Mike Males

The renowned sociologist and youth rights activist Mike Males has some excellent new Substack articles debunking the latest moral panic about young people, smartphones and social media.  As we stand at a crossroads in terms of how public policy is evolving (or devolving), his words should be food for thought for any direct or indirect policymaker as well as anyone going to the polls this November. 

And here is what I added in the comments:

Honestly, I would be fine with making schools phone-free IF AND ONLY IF they alao applied the same rules to teachers, staff, and administrators. Fair is fair. After all, they wouldn't want to be flaming hypocrites about it, right? (But we all know these zealots would probably rather drink Drano than apply their double standards to themselves, of course.)

Excellent work, Mike. I would also add about the ageist abomination that is 21 drinking age, the greatest alcohol policy failure since Prohibition, that Miron and Tetelbaum (2009) also further debunked any claim of a lifesaving effect. The supposed lifesaving effect was all a mirage driven by a handful of early-adopoting states, while for the federal coerced states it was inconsequential at best or even perverse. And notably, counterintuitive as it may be, in that study not even the graduated 18/21 age limits for beer/wine vs hard liquor in some states were vindicated either (those states were disproportionately likely to be coerced late-adopters) as any better than a straight age limit of 18. So any age limit higher than 18 was a net loser in the long run, even for the early adopters whose supposed lifesaving effects evaporated after the first year or two. Oops!

The View From 2030 (At The Latest)

At the rate things are going these days, the following is a very likely conversation that will happen many times over in 2030, at the latest.  At least in the USA:

18 Year Old: "I'm an adult now.  Why am I still not allowed to go on social media or have a smartphone?"

Parent:  "Because the law now forbids both until you are 21, and the law is the law."

18 Year Old:  "But Canadian, Australian, British, and European people my age are allowed to.  As are people my age in almost every other country as well."

Parent:  "Well, we're not Canada, Australia, Europe, or any other country for that matter.  Different cultures and such.  America has too many problems as it is."

18 Year Old:  "But your generation was allowed to at a much earlier age than me!"

Parent:  "That was then.  Life was cheap back then.  We know better now.  And your grandparents were allowed to drink and smoke too at your age, which we obviously no longer allow either, so your point is?"

18 Year Old:  "And they were allowed to play outside with their friends unsupervised even when they were in single digits too, or so I have heard.  Grandma and Grandpa actually got to enjoy the real world before they forgot how to, while you got to enjoy the virtual world at least.  My generation had neither."

Parent:  "Well, the real world was much safer back then compared to now, and as for me, we didn't know just how dangerous the virtual world really was."

18 Year Old:  "Statistics say otherwise".

Parent:  "You need to watch more news and true crime documentaries before you can argue statistics.  It's really a jungle out there now. In any case, I see your statistics, and I raise you a "Because I said so!""

18 Year Old: "Statistics beat logical fallacies and anecdotes every time.  Regardless, it's not fair in what is supposed to be a free country."

Parent:  "Life isn't fair.  Deal with it!"

18 Year Old:  "But I'm literally old enough to get married, and yet I can't even post my own wedding on Facebook?  That doesn't make any sense at all."

Parent:  "If you're so mature and such an adult, then why don't you get married right now?" (Tries to trick the young person into saying they are "too young".)

18 Year Old:  "Because as an adult, I know that just because you CAN do something, it doesn't mean that you SHOULD.  Just like you raised me".

Parent:  (speechless)

18 Year Old:  (Mic drop)

How To Solve The Big Tech Problem Without Violating Anyone's Rights

"Big Tech is the new Big Tobacco" is often bandied about these days.  And while that has a kernel of truth to it (a kernel the size of a cornfield, in fact), it is also used by authoritarian zealots with a very illiberal (and ageist) agenda.  Mandatory age verification, censorship, repealing Section 230, and other related illiberal restrictions would open up the door to many unintended consequences to privacy, cybersecurity, and civil rights and liberties in general.  Even those adults who don't support youth rights will eventually experience these consequences sooner or later.  Kafka, meet trap.  Pandora, meet box.  Albatross, meet neck.

And none of these things will actually solve the collective action problem of Big Tech and the "Social Dilemma".  But here are some things that will, in descending order of priority and effectiveness:

1. First and foremost, take a "Privacy First" approach as recommended by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).  Pass comprehensive data privacy legislation for all ages that, at a minimum, would ban surveillance advertising.
2. Audit the algorithms and internal research of the Big Tech giants, and make the results publicly available for all to see.  Sunlight is truly the best disinfectant. 
3. Require the strictest and safest privacy settings to be the default settings for all users of all ages, which can then be adjusted more liberally by the users themselves.  For example, "friends only" sharing and "no DMs enabled from people whom one does not follow" by default.  And allow the option to turn off all DMs completely as well.
4. Require or incentivize the use of various "architectural" safety features on all social media, such as various nudges, #OneClickSafer ("stop at two hops") to reduce the pitfalls of frictionless sharing, and increase the use of CAPTCHAs to root out the pervasive toxic bots.
5. If after doing that, We the People feel that we must still get stricter in terms of age, then don't make things any stricter than current California standards (i.e. CCPA and CAADCA).

The first two items on the list in particular would of course be vehemently opposed by Big Tech.  That's because their whole business model depends on creepy surveillance advertising and creepy algorithms, and thus incentivizing addiction for profit.  They would thus have to switch to the (gasp!) DuckDuckGo model if these items were done.  (Plays world's smallest violin)

For another, related collective action problem, what about the emerging idea of phone-free schools?  Fine, but to be fair, how about phone-free workplaces for all ages as well?  In both cases, it should ONLY apply while "on the clock", which for school would be best defined as being from the opening bell to the final bell of the day, as well as during any after-school detention time.  And of course, in both cases, there would have to be medical exemptions for students and employees who need such devices for real-time medical monitoring (glucose for diabetes, for example).  Surely productivity would increase so much as a result that we could easily shorten the standard workweek to 30-32 hours per week (8 hours for 4 days, or 6 hours for 5 days) with no loss in profits? 

We must remember that, at the end of the day, Big Tech is NOT our friend.  But neither are the illiberal control freak zealots.  These measures will actually make both sides quite angry indeed.  But truly that's a feature, not a bug.

Big Tech can go EFF off!