Should Minors be banned from Social Media?

Art and fiction
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Originally, I would have scoffed at such a suggestion but as an NSFW artist, it is becoming abundantly clear that the presence of minors on social media is becoming a persistent threat to artistic expression.

Minors are prohibited from viewing pornography by law for obvious reasons, despite this, however, minors are reckless by nature, and even though they cant handle pornography they usually attempt to seek it out at the same time, traumatizing themselves in the process. These traumatized minors can report the source of their trauma to the authorities and the host of the aforementioned source can suffer severe, life-destroying legal penalties for the actions of the Minor.

Many NSFW artists have suffered this fate and in an attempt to prevent further instances of this. NSFW Artists have taken to practicing a variety of methods that ensure their work is viewed by adults only. We put 18+ warnings on all of our art pieces and some NSFW artists, comb through their followers, ensuring that they have their age in their bio. If Minors lie about their age online, it can be difficult to determine if a self-proclaimed adult account is actually a minor in disguise but checking for consistent grammatical errors has been somewhat effective in weeding out minors who lie about their age.

Likewise, this process is very stressful for NSFW artists and we are in constant danger despite our best efforts. Due to this, an increasing amount of NSFW artists are proposing that minors be banned from social media altogether. This could potentially be accomplished with a series of laws that require social media platforms to ask users for I.D or other documentation that functions as proof of adulthood.

Such an act wouldn’t ban minors from the internet, they can still use it for schoolwork and stuff but they won’t be able to use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, etc.

This project would be insanely expensive but I think its positives greatly outweigh its negatives.

  1. It would make life much easier for NSFW Artists
  2. It would prevent minors from being indoctrinated by political misinformation campaigns and adopting harmful political views at a young age.
  3. It would stop minors from making fools of themselves online
  4. It would increase the collective mental health of minors by preventing social media addiction

What does Prostasia think about this? Nay? Yay?

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A law is a bad idea, but social media platforms that allow adult content should do more to ensure that minors are not allowed into adult spaces. Fanexus does a much better job of this than Twitter. In fact, Twitter does a better job of this when it concerns accounts that promote alcoholic beverages, than it does for accounts with sexual content.

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I agree with @terminus position that the law is a bad way of achieving this goal, though, I do believe social media companies ought to do a better job at policing what content minors can view and interact with, as opposed to draconian censorship.

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Isn’t Fanexus for adults only? If so wouldn’t that prove my point that adult-only social media works better?

How would social media platforms perform these improvements without a law to enforce them?

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By requiring an email-verified account in order to access the content, for starters.

Sure, anybody could just make an email, but studies have consistently shown that when you put barriers like this up, it keeps the less-attentive population out since (pardon my language) “zoomers” tend to shy away from anything that requires much effort or attention.
Especially for something like pornography and pornographic artwork.

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No, Fanexus allows 13+ minors… and it’s common for social media platforms to make safety improvements without regulation; they do it all the time. Most recently TikTok improved its safety features to prevent minors interacting with adults that they don’t know. It’s much better for them to self-regulate than to face regulation that will be overbroad and not designed for their specific needs.

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social media platforms that allow abult content should do more to ensure that minors are not allowed into adult spaces

There is a button that activate filters. For example, on twitter, you can choose if you want NSFW to be visible in your feed. Everyone can set fake age and to choose NSFW to be visible. For example, if you are 15 years old, you can set your age at 20.

How can social media fix this? Even if they find a way, more digital tools will appear that will help people who don’t want to follow the rules. So, no matter what social media do, if you want to watch NSFW, you will watch NSFW. This is my opinion. I really don’t see how can these things (NSFW) be censored.

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This is exaggeration. How can someone be traumatized by digital images presenting the true nature of human mind? What about the fact that people watch porn when they start puberty, usually at age of 11-12, someties 13? Don’t they feel sex drive? Because, i remember how my friends masturbated at porn when they were 12-13, and i did the same thing, but at age of 11-12. Obviously, this is the age when human achieve sexual maturity. Im not tryig to sound smart. If you have explanation, people, explain me, so i can know.

I have checked many statistics, and i found that porn watching begind around the age of 11. This is because of the biological program.

At the end of the day, the “18+ warning” are just that… “18+ warning”. These “warnings” don’t have the power to stop pople from viewing the content. Most porn sites have these “18+ warnings”, but it’s clear that people just click on “Im over 18”, even when they are not over 18, and they view the content.

Did you say “weeding out”? This is discrimination. This is ageism - discrimination based on age. I don’t think you will be happy if someone weed you out. Weeding out leads to feelings isolation and loneliness and less friends.

Artists can make their own social media that requires ID. Something similar to twitter, but only artits to be allowed to join. I joined similar social media platform. If you want to watch something that you cant watch legally, you will find a way to watch it illegally. Have you ever heard of Deep Web? The so-called deep web grows much faster that the web you use now. The reason for this, is that Deep Web has less regulations and more freedom, and freedom of speech as well.

It’s illegal to go there, also there is much more illegal content, and this is bad. But what happens when the normal web is nothing but box of regulations and restrictions? Well, people will abadon it.

You sad this:

1. It would make life much easier for NSFW Artists
2. It would prevent minors from being indoctrinated by political misinformation campaigns and adopting harmful political views at a young age.
3. It would stop minors from making fools of themselves online
4. It would increase the collective mental health of minors by preventing social media addiction

My opinion is that this is very totalitarian.

I think that harmful materials should be restricted, but this restriction should not happen by reducting the freedom of expression. By “harmful materials” i mean materials that cause(d) pain to someone.

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Arguing against the fact that minors cannot handle pornography is like arguing whether or not the sky is blue. We have observed this to be an indisputable social anomaly among minors, hence why we have laws that prevent them from looking at pornography. To protect them.

Just because someone gets horny at 11-13 years old, doesn’t mean they should.

Also, the only people who experience ageism in society are the elderly. Children are not, and never have been subjected to prejudice on the basis of their age. Any child who disputes this is just entitled and wants to force their way into adult spaces.

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If they can’t handle porn, why do they watch porn? They don’t get depressed or suicidal.

Sexual maturity is reached at this age.

Children experience ageism, as well. I don’t know children that are allowed to have opinions, to work, to be independed, to walk alone outside, etc… Isn’t this discrimination based on age?

If you are 18, you can.
If you are 17 years, 12 months, 31 days, 23 hous, and 59 minutes old, or younger, then you can’t.

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That’s simply false, young people are regularly discriminated against. If you want a clear example take minimum wages, which in many places are lower for young people. For example on the UK a 24 can be paid less than a 25 year old for the same job because “BS excuse about how young people are less productive”. There are plenty of examples of age based discrimination against young people, many of which extend to children too.

Look at examples of children & young people speaking out about issues that are important to them and how they are discredited, ignored, criticised because they are young.

Even your statement has ageist undertones, “any child who holds an opinion is just entitled”, unintentional as it may be.

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I explained that this is very bad thing. If you are under certain age, you have no rights to tell your opinion. Even if you are 100% right in your opinion, no one is going to take you seriously, because you are just innocent kid that must play, listen to grown people, be 100% depended, and must have suspended rights.

He didn’t provide study to support this claim. If someone wants to prove that children are not able to think, the person will have to provide study of human brain of humans that are under the age of 18 and the study proves they are not able to think.

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Goes both ways. Young boy who cries wolf gets punished for being a prankster. Old guy who cries wolf gets put in a retirement home/insane asylum for having hallucinations.

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That would depend on the porn. If they’re looking at some fetish thing involving blood and violence, they might find that very disturbing, even I would find that disturbing. If it is regular sex, I doubt it would matter at all.

You may want to tag particularly distressing themes like violence separately from more vanilla themes.