My point was that anyone sensible would immediately see the problem with my suggestion, and that would perhaps lead them to understand why enforcing the same rule against kids is wrong.
And again, I’m sorry, but your reasoning is weak as fuck. Would you take away the rights of someone with an intellectual disability from watching porn or smoking?
Sorry, but that logic is absolute and total bullshit.
Adults are extremely bad at making decisions in their best interests too. Why does the government have to oppress kids to protect them, but you when the exact same logic is applied to adults, that’s a problem?
It’s all oppression. It’s all wrong. Kids should have autonomy too.
If anything, it would be far better to ban people above a certain age from social media. I’ve seen far more older people get sucked in by online misinformation and become extreme conspiracy theorists than kids.
I would highly recommend listening to the If Books Could Kill podcast about the book “The Anxious Generation”. I feel like it’s probably one of their weaker episodes, if I’m honest, because they kind of have a preconceived bias against social media, but I think they basically come around to the conclusion that there is basically no compelling evidence that social media is particularly harmful to young people, in a general sense, and that on the whole, it’s also very useful for young people.
This is just yet more oppression of young people dressed up as if it’s for their best interests.
Again, this argument is extremely weak and fails under even the slightest investigation.
Firstly, the claim that kids brains are developing but adults’ brains aren’t is just factually untrue. Redditors love to repeat a little “factoid” about 25 being the age that the brain matures, but it’s just not true. Everyone develops differently and some people may be functionally mature in their mid teens, others may take much longer. Additionally there’s not really an end point where the brain stops developing, so everyone’s brains are always developing. So now you have to draw a line about, how much development is enough? and that asks the question, how do you measure brain development? And there’s actually not really any good answer to that question.
Even if you had some vague range under which brains are developed, which again, we don’t have - where would you draw a line? Anywhere you put it is going to be arbitrary and exclusionary. If you place it somewhere, let’s say, 18, then ask yourself - is it conceivable that there could be a 17 year old who would be capable and mature enough to take on this responsibility? If your answer is yes, then by making that line 18, you’re being ageist.
99% of all oppressions against young people are not justifiable.