If they need to establish your age to allow you to use Social Media, then they will need to establish your identiity.

If they establish your identiity, then if you express opinions out of line with your [future] employer or your [future] government, then you may face retribution or adverse action for holding or expressing those opinions.

The idea being suggested is that there will be special phones for young people, because there is no possibility at all they they will get their hands on the adult versions, the market in second hand stuff being as tightly regulated as it is. No, me neither.

Of course, there are already phones intended specifically for children out there. I wouldn't recommend you buy one. The ones I've seen are cheap Android devices that have been locked down with some unverified tracking and blocking software, never get updates, and have terrible specs. They're locked down so installing applications is either difficult or impossible (without bypassing their protection which isn't always hard if you know how Android images are built). Maybe one reason they're all sold by companies nobody's ever heard of is that nobody actually buys them.

It is up to parents to decide whether they'll buy something of the kind, not the rest of us to either make them better or add software to everything else so they can be switched into that locked mode. If parents don't take action, then I have no reason to do it for them.

If you ban it, more people will be interested in it.

It's going to backfire like "Just say no".

teen1> Oh there is some secret part of the internet they don't want me to see? How do I access it!

teen2> Yes peasants, I know how to access the dark web, it is much better than your pedestrian internet. I belong to the cool kids.

teen3> *receives a link* *sees page is blocked by ISP* Hmm... *googles* "how to bypass ISP blockade". Hmm... *orders a VPS, creates personal VPN by copy pasting commands* Hmm... okay.

etc.

-- He went on to highlight the UK's strict rules around hosting and propagating harmful content online, such as terrorist material, that are already in place.

As with illegal drugs, this shows the limits of the law versus reality. Making something illegal does not stop it, nor is it much of a deterrent to those people who are intent on crime.

-- one in four exhibiting illegal behaviors

That means the law is probably misguided. Criminalising a quarter of any part of society is stupid off the top of the scale. Nor will locking up a few to send a message, or words to that effect, have any effect.

And -especially in the case of teenagers- banning it only makes them want it more. Streisand Effect etc.

Who needs ridiculously invasive laws when PARENTS are the ones ultimately responsible for what their kids are doing.

Parents, it seems, need to take control of kids' phones and internet access. Start with the following:

"If you want to use TIk Tok, you need to buy your own phone and service plan. Until then, this is MY phone and I am allowing you to USE it, at MY discretion,"

Let's teach kids in school about the dark web and how they shouldn't ever use it. Do we really think telling kids not to do something is going to work in the way we expect? As soon as one kid in a school finds something online of interest you can guarantee it won't be long before the rest of the school know.

Maybe that's the idea. Get more kids to view harmful content and then use it as an excuse for enacting even more strict laws about accessing and monitoring the use of internet.

" As soon as one kid in a school finds something online of interest "

The fundamental question we need to answer is "why are torture and murder sites interesting to kids?", and then find a fix for that. However the effective answer will probably need such a societal culture shift that it's not going to be deliverable.

Part of that answer is that the adrenalin rush has been exploited for ages to sell goods and services, and unfortunately it's subject to habituation, requiring ever stronger stimuli to trigger it, so the baseline itself has become an excessive level of excitement.

Another part is that passive consumption of electronic media has largely supplanted actually doing things that resulted in sufficient satisfaction at lower levels. When I was a kid, we built and flew model aeroplanes, scrounged components from old kit and built radios, hiked for miles cross country at weekends and played a lot of sport. All of these were challenging and delivered recognition of real achievement, which was our 'high'.

Finally, although it's unpopular to say so, most of us live in societies that are excessively pre-occupied by sex and violence from a very early age (via movies and marketing).

Putting all this together, it's clear that reversing these trends is fundamental to the societal change that might solve the problem. But who among the media moguls and marketeers is going to start?

The fundamental assumption in your statement is that torture and murder sites are interesting to a lot of kids. While there are undoubtedly some, you and the campaigners here are alleging that it's a large group, whereas I've seen evidence so far that it was what, three of them? There are certainly more, but you can't paint this as an epidemic from one data point. Before we declare something a societal scourge that needs tremendous effort, significant changes, and plenty of side-effects to resolve, it is fair to ask how widespread the problem we're trying to solve really is.

@doublelayer

" you and the campaigners here are alleging that it's a large group "

Nowhere did I suggest it was a large group that perpetrate extreme acts. However, it should be noted that quite probably a majority of "detective" stories and movies centre around murder, the most popular video games by far seem to be those relating to mayhem of one sort or another (e.g. "first person shooters"), and a high proportion of kids do indeed find them entertaining. The kind of incident that triggered the current debate is an extreme exception, but the general level of acceptance of violence as entertainment is objectively pretty high. As the baseline is so high, the threshold for deviance into extreme behaviour is closer to the norm that it should be, resulting as it does in "hardening of the arteries" -- loss of empathy for suffering.

I wasn't referring to violence in media. I was referring to this:

"The fundamental question we need to answer is "why are torture and murder sites interesting to kids?", and then find a fix for that."

There is a difference between a crime show where somebody gets murdered in the first scene and then the rest of the episode involves finding the one who did it, conveniently ending in their capture after forty minutes of magical computers, and a site that shows actual or realistic torture. A lot more people watch the former. You cannot assume that people liking the former leads to people liking the latter, nor that the existence of the former makes the latter anything near a widespread phenomenon. Nor have you really demonstrated any change, given that entertainment depicting violence is not at all new.

Exactly. A long time ago... before computer networking was even a dream in DARPA's minds, the cool kids would gather behind the bike shed's at school and do two things.

1) - trade ciggies. You could buy Players No 6's in packets of 5 or 10 (some places would sell you a single fag).

2) - look at the centrefolds of mags like Playboy.

If we got caught with 1) our parent would ask, can I have one.

and 2), we get a slap around the head and told not to do it again. If it was your father then he'd confiscate the offending pages and watch them while he did his No'2's.

It if was your mother then you'd be in purgatory for weeks.

Today? Kids plan to kill another one just for the fun of it.

Progress? Backwards.

This is all part of the reason why I refuse to sign up for any social media site. Far too much anti-social behaviour for my liking.

It is a shame - but understandable - that the media takes the suggestions of the bereaved seriously, even when they are completely unworkable. Desperately unhappy children sometimes do terrible things; it would be better to reduce that desperate unhappiness than to look for technological impediments to their expression.

Not all children are angelic little creatures.

If a kid was searching for murder / torture related material it would imply they had an interest in it already, if they were blocked from finding such content* their morbid interest in this area would not magically disappear.

Plenty of film / "TV" content out there with murder & torture content. Same for paintings, books. Not really viable to prevent access to big chunks of culture.

.... and of course, at the end of the day you cannot really take away someone's imagination, thus a disturbed person can fantasize about whatever they like & nobody will ever know.

The concern is that UK government / lawmakers are always on the look out to destroy privacy and introduce ID systems & leap at any excuse ("think of the children" ahoy).

For those outside the UK and / or not familiar with Brianna Ghey case. Ghey was a young male, identifying as female. So not beyond the realms of possibility that Ghey was at some point investigating various trans related content & may have wanted to keep that secret for a while - any idea of privacy like that for young people investigating culturally / personally sensitive areas, would be gone with these privacy destroying plans.

* lets imagine the fantasy world, technologically unfeasible scenario where this happens

It goes back to the case of the kids from Columbine High School creating a map of the school in Doom before the shooting. It wasn't the game that was the problem, they could've done the same thing with interior decorating software or a pencil.

The killers in the Ghey case looked up violent imagery on the dark web, but if that was unavailable they would have just looked up violent imagery on the regular web.

All of these proposals seem to work on the assumption that grown-ups are more capable than children when it comes to computers.

I don't think that assumption should go unchallenged.

"What are the proposed new hate crime laws and why the delay?"

https://www.irishtimes.com/politics/2023/12/05/qa-what-are-the-proposed-new-hate-crime-laws-and-why-the-delay/

"Ireland Just SHOCKED The World And Elon Is FIGHTING BACK!"

https://rumble.com/v4djesu-ireland-just-shocked-the-world-and-elon-is-fighting-back.html

Children commit criminal acts regularly, which is why we've always had a limitation of liability declaring children not to be responsible for anything (including killing other people) until they turn ten years old. Whether we're talking playground fights or saying/doing nasty things which push the boundaries of legal conduct socially, there's no denying that a sizeable chunk of kids learn right from wrong by doing things!

As per usual, the absolutely useless advice of "encourage any concerned parents and teachers to speak to young people with an interest in tech, help them understand the dangers" is being given. The reason this does not work is because most parents and teachers are objectively too incompetent with technology to be able to command the respect required to do this. The only way this can be resolved is the same way any other advice is given: By having actual experts who do command respect give people actual advice on how to use Tor and other tools safely, regardless of whether the reasons for using it would give many reasonable people the ick, and irrespective of the potential legality (or illegality) of the content.

Experts should also stop being hamstrung by petty morality and the letter of the law because it limits the effectiveness of any good advice they give. To use a drugs as an analogy, when young people are educated on cannabis use by experienced drugs experts, they're not denied information on the best ways to safely get high, despite the fact that possession is illegal. Priority is given to ensuring they're getting the most out of their recreational activities without harming themselves or others around them, irrespective of what anyone else thinks. This is done because the government (rightly) sees prohibition as a lost battle and instead focuses on minimising as much real-world harm as possible. This approach should be our first choice, not our last resort.