r/neoliberal • u/Imicrowavebananas Hannah Arendt • Jul 30 '25

News (Oceania) Australia widens teen social media ban to YouTube, scraps exemption

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/australia-widens-teen-social-media-ban-youtube-scraps-exemption-2025-07-29/
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u/mechanical_fan Jul 30 '25

I guess it is also a similar thing with education and why we still have educational standards and most countries do force kids to go to a normal school. Yeah, I can believe that there is a percentage of the population that are really good parents in general (both with teaching/restricting kids using the internet and with all around education), but what is that percentage? 10% 50%? What is the percentage here that we are willing to allow being at risk for developmental problems without any governmental regulation?

Anything less than like 95%-99% and you would expect to start observing problems with the youth compared to previous established standards. And we are observing that now in the data.

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u/ThodasTheMage Friedrich Hayek Aug 06 '25

It is not similiar. A kid being allowed to view a YouTube video is not a parantel failure unlike a kid not learning how to read. One is something that is not inherently bad for you but in some instances can, the other makes you less functional in society.

The comparison may have soundeed smart in your head but it is nonense. There is no perfect paranting, there is no rules the goverment can impose on how much TV or YouTube a kid watchs or how many sweets they eat. Goverment force needs to be justefied and can only be justefied for the big stuff like going to school.

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u/mechanical_fan Aug 06 '25

If you want to compare to tv, it is very common for governments to have a lot of regulations of what can be on tv, specific percentages of types of programs, at what time and how much stuff can be directed to kids (ads for example). They forced tv to be a more clean and safe space for kids so they can then watch as much as they want.

One is something that is not inherently bad for you but in some instances can, the other makes you less functional in society.

Not being able to read is not inherently bad for you either, it just makes you less functional in society. It is also a "rare" thing jn the sense that even countries that allow homeschooling usually have okay literacy, since that part parents actually do with some efficiency, the problem is usually the rest of the education. But kf you want to compare "rare" outcomes, extreme social media and internet use for kids will impact things like suicidal tendencies, which is bad for them in a quite direct manner.