Banning Social Media for Everyone Under 16

[Leonardo17]

I’ve never been a pro banning thing things person but things in this area seem to be getting out of control rather quickly:
 
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/boys...-128611202
 
How do 13 year olds generate naked pictures of their also 13 year old classmates on snap chat, not be punished (because snapchat erases images within a few minutes and the victim eventually gets kicked out of school for attacking another 13 year old who was viewing her AI generated nude images?
 
So now Australia is banning all social media platforms for everyone under 16. The EU is working on similar laws. And China has already limited social media usage to everyone under 18 to 1 hour / day or something like that:
 
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyp9d3ddqyo
 
   Personally, I was never into these things from the very beginning. If I have old friends, I call them with the telephone. I rarely browse their profiles on facebook. Twitter is so infested with social media trolls that I only use it if someone sends me a link from watsapp or something like that. I use Instagram to view places or advertisement about local bars, music groups and other stuff like that. And that’s about it. And I am not really “old” or anything like that either
 
   On the contrary, I even used to be a nerdish kid on technological issues as a kid. I grew up with a commodore 63. I even owned a soviet-made PC at some point. So I really love technology and the internet even more.
  
   Still: time being a precious resource, I never even understood the whole logic behind social media. With kids generating naked pictures of their pairs I don’t see any problem even with restricting them to flip-phones until they are 15-16 years of age or something like that?
 
Don’t you agree?

[Paraselene]

We always thought telly would rot our brains. Turns out, social media does a better job of it.

[Paleophyte]

Personally, I was never into these things from the very beginning. If I have old friends, I call them with the telephone. I rarely browse their profiles on facebook. Twitter is so infested with social media trolls that I only use it if someone sends me a link from watsapp or something like that. I use Instagram to view places or advertisement about local bars, music groups and other stuff like that. And that’s about it. And I am not really “old” or anything like that either

"I'm an old Luddite and we should close the interweb! Damned kids!"
  - translation provided by Google

[Mr Greene]

Welcome to law of unintended consequences and alterior motives...

Australia has introduced a ban on social media for under 16s, now figure out which sites you visit match the legal definition of 'Social Media'.
UK brought in a requirement for age checks (id) on any website that might contain 'adult images'.

Result 1; Various software including games were able to spoof the age checks.
Result 2; Sites could either add the pricey and potentially vulnerable age check software, or just blanket block all UK ip adresses including sites like Imgur and various streaming services.
Result 3; 3000% increase in use of VPNs in UK since introduction of legislation.
Alterior motive; The lobbyists pushing for this are funded by online bookmakers and casinos facing advertising bans from social media due to possibility of children gambling.