Greece to ban social media for under-15s from 2027, calls on EU action
Posted by F0urLeafCl0ver@reddit | anime_titties | View on Reddit | 29 comments
Posted by F0urLeafCl0ver@reddit | anime_titties | View on Reddit | 29 comments
Graphene-OS@reddit
I mean… good… but maybe put the legal responsibility on parents to enforce this instead of imposing privacy-destroying age verification on all adults across society.
iPhones and Androids make it incredibly easy to set up parental controls. If you’re so incompetent that you can’t spend 5 minutes being walked step-by-step through a simple setup process, your child should be placed in state custody. You can’t be trusted to not mix up a bottle of drain cleaner and vegetable oil.
If the government starts enforcing €2,500 fines on parents when their 12yo child is discovered to have a social media account, you can bet idiot parents will pull their heads out their assess and set up parental controls.
ImpossibleDragonfly@reddit
As easy as it is for parents to apply parental controls on a phone it is even easier for a teenager to get around those same restrictions - especially if you consider that children tend to be more technologically fluent than their parents.
It is very likely that social media companies already know your age and many other details of your life anyways. Their entire business model is to gather data about you and sell it to others.
Graphene-OS@reddit
I don’t know about android, but it is not easy to bypass most parental restrictions on iPhone. Apple can also ban installing social media apps for devices set up as a child’s phone.
The real issue isn’t kids getting around parental restrictions; it’s parents not bothering to set them up in the first place. When they start hearing about other parents actually getting fined, they will set it up and they’ll punish their kids if they’re caught using any prohibited apps/sites. But with the age verification currently being pushed, there is nothing stopping shitty parents from just letting their kid use their ID to set up TikTok.
It should be treated like alcohol/cigs. If your 12yo kid sneaks into liquor cabinet and is caught drinking your alcohol with his friends, that is your responsibility as a parent and the legal repercussions generally fall on you.
ImpossibleDragonfly@reddit
I haven't heard of a single case of a parent being fined for their child's alcohol use.
On the other hand, if a store is caught selling alcohol to a minor that can get their liquor license revoked.
If you want to treat a social media ban like we do alcohol and cigarettes than we should be fining the social media companies if we catch them allowing minors to use their website just like we fine retailers for selling these things to children.
not_not_in_the_NSA@reddit
It makes sense to me (with a Canadian perspective) that having laws on the books to punish parents for this is the way to go. As long as the law/courts rule that using available parental controls is sufficient to prove innocence, then its fair imo.
To use alcohol as an analogy. There is the distiller making whiskey, the LCBO selling it, and the customer buying it. If the customer is underage, the LCBO cannot sell to them. If someone buys alcohol for an underage person, then that's also illegal.
Now to connect it with social media (or any other online content), the distiller is the websites, the LCBO is the user's phone, and the customer is phone's user. If the user is underage, the phone should be required to have parental controls just like the LCBO is required to check ID. If the user isn't underage, no parental controls needed.
If a child gets around it on their own, then oh well no one is at legal fault.
Its not like online checks have stopped much in Australia or other places they have been implemented, and doing it like this is far less oppressive than imposing on the privacy of the entire population.
Graphene-OS@reddit
In California, the parent would charged under Penal Code Section 272 with contributing to the delinquency of a minor and fined up to $2,500. Plenty of other states have similar statutes.
In other words, age/identity verification. It should not be my responsibility to sacrifice my privacy because shitty parents are too lazy or too careless to spend five minutes setting up on-device limits. Parents are the most capable enforcers and bear the most responsibility to keep their children off social media. It should be considered a form or juvenile delinquency or a status offense for a child to use social media, and parents who contribute to it, actively or passively, should be penalized.
Cohibaluxe@reddit
I'd argue it's easier to get around age-verficiation methods being employed today, than parental controls on phones. The former can be bypassed with a photo, the latter would require the child breaking the parental control passcode. And even if they do, the fact remains that the suggestion of punishing parents for not supervising their children properly is still better than not doing so.
"The bad thing is already happening, so why not let it happen easier"? That's your argument?
ImpossibleDragonfly@reddit
The main thrust of my argument that I haven't articulated is that its more oppressive to fine adults thousands of euros for the behaviour of children who can easily get into a social media app and have no easy way to stop them than it is to require people to identify themselves online to preserve a sense of privacy which is an illusion in the first place.
They're both "bad" but being fined over something you cannot control is far worse than providing information they already have anyways.
viktlo70@reddit
why should I identify myself online, because there are parents who are not able to control what their children are doing ?
creaturewaltz@reddit
Because you live in a society and sometimes we do things for the collective good.
viktlo70@reddit
like, people parenting their children ?
ImpossibleDragonfly@reddit
You don't have to identify yourself to determine your age.
You could (for example) require a unique 5 digit alphanumeric ID that is attached to a govt database that can verify whether the person attached to that ID is over 18.
viktlo70@reddit
So I have to go through all this, just because there are people who can't parent their children ? And it could be "more oppressive" to fine them because they can't control their children ?
Beliriel@reddit
It is also very easy for an underage teenager to steal car keys and drive off. Doesn't mean we need to force people to have fingerprint scanners for the car keys.
ImpossibleDragonfly@reddit
Instead we require every driver to be registered with the government and carry a license with them. Are you against driver's licenses?
ResilientBiscuit@reddit
It costs like $30 to get a prepaid phone that can use WiFi to access the internet.
If you can hide your weed kit from your folks you can hide a 2nd phone.
Graphene-OS@reddit
Okay but the vast majority of kids are not going to do that, and there would be much less incentive for a kid to even have social media when his friends don’t.
ResilientBiscuit@reddit
Why do you think kids would not do that? Not being able to access social media would be a pretty huge shift.
Graphene-OS@reddit
Maybe for kids who are currently 15 or 16, but it would only take a few years until the norm is for kids to just not have social media. A 10yo today isn’t actually losing social media because he’s not on it. By the time he’s 14, there’s not much incentive for him to buy another phone to access an app that he’s never used and which none of his friends are on.
notislant@reddit
"maybe put the legal responsibility on parents"
We all know the overwhelming majority of parents will not do this or they will be circumvented.
"instead of imposing privacy-destroying age verification on all adults across society."
Yeah the data harvesting for EVERYONE under the guise of age verification is more of an issue than the issue this is trying to solve imo.
PissRat59@reddit
Maybe we should moreso focus on addicting algorithms, predatory advertisements and the spread of fake news and propaganda through these networks by holding the social media companies accountable.
CoffeeWorldly9915@reddit
But then the profits would only be obscenely large, instead of outrageously obscene. Also, what if an election needs rigging?
insitnctz@reddit
Shity effort aimed to id our online footprint. "We do it for the kids man". Nothing this goverment does is for the good of the Greeks. They are a bunch of conmen.
AgitatedMagpie@reddit
Let's check in with Australia to see how this is going for them. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-18/parents-say-social-media-ban-for-under-16s-ineffective/106573126
Hmm, not great
johnybgoat@reddit
As someone that grew up in early 2000.... Man, can we leave this kinda stuff to the parents already? Many of us with a 19 infront of our birth year know that "Are you 18?" Means jackshit. 90% all broke it. Why are we pretending to be saints?
PinkDisorder@reddit
1991 here. I'd get asked if I'm 18 to enter clubs and just say yeah I'm 18 while giggling and be let in anyway. I was 15. Same year they introduced the cigarette age check too and I only got IDd after I'd already turned 18.
PS: nic clean for many years now
PrettyPinkNightmare@reddit
Many parents are simply too lazy to do anything about the phone usage of their kids.
Kids on social media, Roblox, Fortnite,... means less actual parenting.
I work at an elementary school and can easily tell, how much time students spend on their phones by their behavior.
A ban is necessary.
Krumpopodes@reddit
LOL. You think that kids will play more or less Fortnite if social media is banned? Children's education needs to include safely engaging in online spaces. Otherwise you are just creating a tech illiterate population that is MORE vulnerable as adults. Maybe we need to stop with the dogshit billionaire conceived chromebook courses and have teachers run actual curriculum and address the growing actual illiteracy and incompetence problem with students across the board.
Revlar@reddit
The workday and schoolday both need to change so parents have time to handle these issues and children can be coached in their approach to these things. It should not be handled through age verification.
The real problem here is the total lack of responsibility that has become common globally. This constant racing for the smallest crumb of fame and wealth is affecting everyone. Children are constantly bombarded with staged images of success via the influencers they watch, and there is nothing that can compete because this model's stranglehold over the media space is complete. The worst part is that there is nothing to replace it with, because all of our institutions are losing legitimacy.
We would live in a different world if governments across the world had united over stopping the genocide in Gaza, because that would have restored so much legitimacy in the eyes of the world. Instead we get the reverse and then wonder why nobody trusts anything anymore.
Conservative politics is the art of failing upwards. Do everything wrong and then blame the institutions. Later get elected on the promise to tear down the institutions. Replace them with fascism and repeat when necessary.