When she was in fifth grade, Scarlett Goddard Strahan started to worry about getting wrinkles.
By the time she turned 10, Scarlett and her friends were spending hours on TikTok and YouTube watching influencers tout products for achieving today’s beauty aesthetic: a dewy, “glowy,” flawless complexion. Scarlett developed an elaborate skin care routine with facial cleansers, mists, hydrating masks and moisturizers.
One night, Scarlett’s skin began to burn intensely and erupted in blisters. Heavy use of adult-strength products had wreaked havoc on her skin. Months later, patches of tiny bumps remain on Scarlett’s face, and her cheeks turn red in the sun.
“I didn’t want to get wrinkles and look old,” says Scarlett, who recently turned 11. “If I had known my life would be so affected by this, I never would have put these things on my face.”
The skin care obsession offers a window into the role social media plays in the lives of today’s youth and how it shapes the ideals and insecurities of girls in particular. Girls are experiencing high levels of sadness and hopelessness. Whether social media exposure causes or simply correlates with mental health problems is up for debate. But to older teens and young adults, it’s clear: Extended time on social media has been bad for them, period.
Nope.
I don’t want anyone verifying my identity for any reason other than government or financial business, where there is a legitimate reason to do so. There is absolutely no reason some random-ass company needs access of any sort to my demographic information, when I am a legal adult doing things well within my rights to do. Especially if this thing was automated to feed that data without my consent or knowledge, as you are suggesting. Absolutely fuck all of that. Plus that would mean there’s a central query database of all the sites you’ve ever accessed for any reason, and that’s fucking scary, even if you aren’t doing anything wrong.
This wouldn’t work any better than any other privacy-leaky method anyway. People hand down phones to their kids a lot without factory resetting them. And stolen IDs/identity theft are a thing. And you don’t think that central identity bank would be prime target #1 for hackers? If the last decade has taught us anything, it’s that companies WILL NOT protect your data properly, and they WILL NOT suffer consequences of any sort when (not if, when) there is a breach.
At the end of the day, ensuring someone else’s kids don’t have access to something said parent doesn’t want them to access…? Not my problem, and absolutely not a good enough reason to violate my privacy that thoroughly.
You act like these companies don’t already have your identity anyway. Google, Apple, Microsoft. They know exactly who you are. The idea is that those mega corps who already handle identity information are in a better position to be a 3rd party witness to other, less trustworthy websites to say ‘yes this person is an adult’. So you don’t have to give that random website any personal info.
I’d have suggested the government fulfill this role, but people would freak out way more about that.
It’s absolutely affecting you though. Basically every where online is now ‘family friendly’ because it’s impossible to create adult spaces online. You can’t keep the kids out no matter what you do. And that’s bringing everything down to the lowest common denominator and trying to cram the entire gamut of human interactions down into a single, heavily censored experience. It’s why censorship has gotten completely out of control. Something needs to change or we’ll app be stuck with PG spaces for 10 year olds forever.
Sure, they might know my identity. But very importantly, they aren’t every single random company out there whose website I happen to briefly access for whatever reason. They don’t need to know anything about me, and they shouldn’t.
I can’t do anything about big tech companies knowing things about me, tho I do try to limit it when I can, but not literally everyone needs to know who I am just because I want to access their content. That’s absolutely absurd.
It definitely isn’t impacting me in the slightest. Idk what you do with your time, but I don’t really want my platforms to be unmoderated cesspools, and the places I do choose to exist or use are in line with what I want, so… meh. It’s literally not an issue I have.
Breweries and bars in my area are often kid-friendly with toys and everything, and I just don’t go to those places. I do the same with online spaces. They aren’t meant for me if they aren’t what I’m looking for, so I don’t go. There’s plenty of places that are for me, though, and I go to those places on and offline.