And how would that be enforced? More surveillance?
this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2025
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You know it
It sounds like they're using MitID, the Danish government personal verification software. It's completely ubiquitous here, and it's linked to your CPR number (like a social security number but more functional).
The apps, as far as I understand it, won't know anything other than "yes they verified they're over 18" from MitID.
I understand and definitely feel the surveillance fear, but this feels well worth it to me for less brainwashing of children by companies like Twitter and FB
Apparently you have to either verify your profile using a government developed app, or the SoMe companies can introduce their own verification methods if they want. So yeah, presumably more surveillance with all Danish users having to verify. However it also says the law only targets specific SoMes with a verifiable bad effect on children - so it might not be a blanket ban but only affect the larger ones. No idea how that's gonna work out though.
verifiable bad effect on children.
Oh, so they'll be able to pay to get off the baddies list, then. I get it.
Nah, I doubt it. This is Denmark, not the US. But it means that it won't be like the UK, where all websites just IP ban people from there since the laws are too broad. Still a huge privacy nightmare though.
This is Denmark, not the US
That's not how lawmakers think, surely you can't be that naive?
This will 100% be used as evidence to do these things in other places, and no one from Denmark will adequately warn that.
Denmark is the one spearheading chat control, btw.
Yeah, Denmark is doing lots of stupid stuff wrt online privacy right now. But there is not some corrupt "let the big tech firm pay us off to not be affected" reason behind this, as the commenter suggested. More a protect the children and a "protect the childrenβ’" reasoning.
I don't really understand technology, but I'm pretty sure the digital ID app can be used to verify your age without giving the website any further personal information.
I donβt really understand technology,
The wise person knows that they know nothing. I'd like to unironically tap into that wisdom. My problem is that I do understand technology, and I have a hard time understanding what people expect such laws to do.
How do you feel such laws relate to the Fediverse and Lemmy in particular?
Regardless of the practicality of enforcing this I think it's a good idea. Most social media is very predatory and do not contribute in any positive way to a child that's growing up. I've seen what especially TikTok does to a young kids brain, it's almost like it's reprogrammed to not have any focus and the addictive part of it makes them always want more TikTok.
Wouldn't it be better to teach children how to deal with that kind of technology instead of just banning it? Bans similar to drug bans will only make this go underground, allowing the social Media companies to argue there are no children on the platform.
While I can see your point, I don't think education can stand up to companies with more money than we can conceive that have teams of people making it as addictive as possible and shoehorning in into every aspect of life. If education were enough, nobody would use tobacco, either.
One of the biggest benefits of young people not being on social media sites or having to at least pretend to be somebody else that I see is that their mistakes can be private. Nobody deserves to be publicly shackled to who they were as a 14 year old dipshit.
I agree that education can't prepare us entirely for social media or for life as a whole, but I see this proposed ban as the easy way out for the government. If social media is a toxic place for children, why and shouldn't we try to fix it instead of just not allowing children? And if we agree that social media is toxic for children, what makes it ok for adults?
You can't fix those companies because you can't fix their incentives.
And if we agree...
There's a ton of things that are acceptable for adults that aren't for children. I bet you can come up with at least three.
Yeah I don't think the problem is children on social media. I think it's social media being entirely unregulated. It exists to steal data, invade privacy, and influence people. That's entirely nefarious and blocking children from accessing it isn't going to fix any of that.
Teacher tells a kid to be careful of social media, but the kid's favourite influencer tells the kid their teacher is lame and they shouldn't listen to that. Who is the kid going to believe.
Also we don't let kids into bars until they're of a certain age. Sure kids are going to still do shenanigans to get in and sometimes they might succeed, but it reduces children getting drunk at bars by significant amount. And even when kids are able to do something they're prohibited from, they at least know it's not a normal thing and might understand there's danger in what they're doing.
It would be nice if we could simply teach kids, but there are things even adults don't understand. That's where govt comes in. What the major part of population doesn't comprehend might be the things from which the govt tries to protect. Then there is a fine line between protecting people and plain breaking basic human rights (like the whole encryption ban fiasco).
Exactly, I wouldn't even shy from making it banned under 18 years old. Even teenagers are affected mentally and those few years more would make wonders. Just how many teenage girls comitted a suicides because of facebook/instagram.
Wouldn't it be better to forbid these predatory features / dark patterns / addictive design etc. in a general way ? What is bad for young people is not good for older people either. There is a difference between free speech and using manipulation.
It's sounds like a good thing on the surface. But this is the kind of thing parents should be doing, not governments. I don't know how parents just let their kids doomscroll tiktok and shit all day, why have kids if you arent prepared to raise them?
The lives of children should never be completely left up to whatever random people happened to birth them, imo. You don't have to be good parenting material to want children, and you don't have to want children to make some. They should receive every bit of resources and care the community can reasonably contribute, and that includes keeping harmful things away from them. whether it's physical or mental harm.
Exactly... so it's an overall education and support problem. We want good children to make good parents who make good children.
If the parents arent there for the child, then the child will suffer. So the governments should be focusing on education, mental and social support. Not blanket banning of social media. Social media is only a problem because we let it become one through complacency and a lack of proper systems to support our youth.
Can you be more specific about the kind of support you're suggesting? I think social media is addictive just by the nature of it, even for adults, and I'm not able to imagine a way to combat it short of regulating it away.
There's no overnight solution, it would take generations, but a lot of issues in society stem from poor upbringings, children who feel alone. Schools should be more than schools, with support programs for children with different learning needs, a place they always have an adult to talk to.
We should be teaching children about addictions and their effects, better educating them on the dangers of social media, not just about creeps, but how algorithms work, the dangers of big corporations and how they would seek to control your life and suck money from you.
Schools should be fun, make kids learn without them realising it. Take them out on trips to places, let them see the world they might not see from their homelife. There should be plenty of extra-curricular activities for children to engage in, get them interested in something, give them places to play sport, hangout and stuff with friends outside of school hours. While social media is addictive, if you give them something else to do, something they are interesting in that's easily accessible to them, a lot will do that instead.
Children with mental or physical health issues need to be looked after better, with facilities to support them, whether its during school hours or after. Children should be ready for the world as much as possible when they turn into adults, but they should still find that same care and support available after growing up.
The world is fucked and it all starts from the bottom, capitalism has choked every cent out of these systems. Then their fix is to just ban social media? No. That's to exert control, not to benefit our future generations.
Look, I hate facebook, twitter, tiktok whatever as much as anyone and would love to see them banned outright, but that's not going to solve anything. New ones would appear. We wouldnt be discussing anything here with a social media ban. We have to try and weed out the dependency on social media, bans wont work.
Parents can't compete with the resources of these unimaginably monied corporations with teams of people trying to get everybody on their site as much as possible.
Banning things like this sets a dangerous precedent for state control and is easily worked around anyway. The sites should be regulated in other ways, like what content they are exposing to kids and giving guardians more controls over their childrens accounts.
But the real issue is deep rooted societal issues, with a lack of education, care and support for a lot of our youth.
state control
As opposed to corporate control.
guardians
That's an individual solution to a systemic issue.
But the real issue
So all we have to do is fix society? Then yeah, let's just do that. We can probably finish that off by the end of the year, yeah? Education should only take a week or two at most. Then next year we can finally focus on climate change.
Youre right its too difficult, will take too long, so not lets start at all! Let's just give up and start requiring ID for everything instead, that will do it!
Just because I don't think regulating large corporations is a "dangerous precedent" doesn't mean I think IDs are a decent solution. Your nebulous "deep rooted societal issues" cannot be defined let alone solved. I was mostly making light of that simple solution, not saying complex problems aren't worth tackling. Anyway, I'm done talking to somebody that puts words in my mouth and tries to make issues into a binary choice devoid of all complexity.
Cute.
I mean sure, parents should be doing it but that doesnt mean the government also can't. Im firmly against any kind of age verification laws that might come attached with it, but also would argue that social media has no value for kids under 15. It definitely shouldnt be normalized. If its banned some kids will still end up doing it, but if they cant use their own birthday to sign up and they cant post blatant pictures of themselves on their profile and not all of their friends are on it then it becomes a lot less desirable also. These sites never should have been allowing sign ups by children in the first place. Facebook and instagram require you to be 13 at least, which is good but 15 is better.
Social media has been "banned" in that way since forever, as you said, most sites required you to be 13 or whatever and kids just lied about their age then. Kids just wont post pictures, they are still exposed to all that shit on there though. They cannot properly enforce a ban like this without ID verification, which is a fucking disaster.
It's weird, seeing this praised on Lemmy.
I'm wondering if the Fediverse has a future in Europe as such laws spread.
Social media is doing serious damage to people's mental health, especially the non-anonymous ones. It's a good thing that it's being clamped down on.
There's a study being commissioned in the UK on why there are record numbers of young people that are NEETS, and why there is a mental health crisis. I'll bet that social media is found to be a major factor.
Huh. I thought it was weed doing those things.
Really? So not the ongoing economic implosion, the rise of facism, and the destruction of our planet's entire ecosystem?
Huh. Wierd.
Surely not. Forget about the economy. Just indoctrinate the youth and impose strict censorship. It's the secret of the success of the Soviet Union. BTW Have they conquered the world by now? I stopped following the news in the 1980s.
I don't think I've ever seen anyone on fedi that not of an age that would have at some point made a Facebook account.
Hello incoming under 15s to the fediverse, hope you enjoy your time here!
I'm still for an social media alternative for and only for young people, preferable gouverment based, so that it dosn't need to make money. In Germany, a while back we had SchΓΌlerVZ (maybe the original StudiVZ is more broadly known) with excatly that purpose. It had all the trolling and bullying we know from social media, but all that was way less toxic for 12 year old me, because most were like at most 16 at the time.
When it's administered is a good way, you give these young fucks the outlet to share their cringy shit with their friends like they want to and teach them how god awful people on the internet can be at the same time, while in an safe space from predetory adults and their companys.
I honestly am in support of this
The headline is a bit misleading. "Parents will have the opportunity to consent to their children's access, if their children are as young as 13". A lot of people are worried that this will mean the de facto minimum age will be 13.
(Here is an article in Danish regarding it: https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/flere-organisationer-roser-aftale-om-alderskrav-paa-sociale-medier)