Kids are outsmarting social media bans. That's not a problem we need to solve

Commenters argued about governments’ attempts to block under‑16s from social platforms and how kids quickly bypass such bans. schappim shared an anecdote about a child building a private network to dodge restrictions; prologic and rdm_blackhole called the Australian-style bans ineffectual and poorly consulted, while ModernMech noted successive generations have long outsmarted media bans. Several warned of predictable workarounds: jruohonen flagged rising VPN and dark‑web use, go_elmo said platforms have little incentive to keep kids out, and others worried that half‑hearted enforcement makes a law pointless or dangerous (derektank, Eddy_Viscosity2).

Where opinion split was on the right response. Many commenters pushed education and digital literacy: softwaredoug and wongarsu compared teaching social media to teaching sex, drugs, politics and literature so kids can judge platforms. Others insisted parents must cultivate virtues and protect children rather than rely on laws (prologic, anenefan). Some criticized the article as biased toward tech interests (abbadadda, cyberclimb) or argued kids don’t need social media and should be kept offline. Privacy and enforcement tradeoffs were highlighted: mjmas noted sweeping "duty of care" laws and immunity for researchers, while mdp2021 and others argued that blocking access to resources like YouTube and Wikipedia would be harmful.