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The story
On October 30, the citizens’ group “Association to Protect Children from SNS” submitted a petition to the Children and Families Agency calling for a law banning SNS use by anyone under 16, up through middle school age. Concerns about children’s SNS use—including involvement in crime and slander/harassment—have been raised, and a working group at the Children and Families Agency is already discussing whether to impose a blanket age restriction. On 5ch, opinions split over whether a ban is justified and where to draw the line on what counts as “SNS,” with comments like “It’s safer if kids just do it among themselves,” “LINE is used for school contact, so banning it is impossible,” and “Rather than age, they should regulate the adults.”
A citizens’ group has submitted a petition to the Children and Families Agency calling for, among other things, a legal ban on SNS use by anyone under 16, up through middle school age.
Regarding children’s SNS use, risks such as involvement in crime and slander/harassment have grown more diverse, and a working group at the Children and Families Agency is discussing whether to impose a uniform age restriction.
Amid this, today (the 30th), the citizens’ group “Association to Protect Children from SNS” submitted a petition to the Children and Families Agency calling for a legal ban, among other measures, on SNS use by anyone under 16, up through middle school age.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
But that's only a handful of kids
The real harm is growing up from early childhood constantly confronted with the gap created by the "parent lottery" and "gene lottery" (slang for the luck of the draw in who you're born to)
The irony is it's the parents who want to "reset" because they failed the "child lottery" (slang for the luck of which kid you end up with)
Suicides are increasing
That's because the phone doubles as a GPS safety charm
There are grown adults (guys over 40!) filling their mouths with cola and spitting it all over the street, uploading videos of themselves clowning around—why isn't that being cracked down on?
It's obvious that these attention-seeking, extreme, airheaded adults are the ones destroying public decency.
Regulate the immature adults, not kids' SNS use
Some schools use LINE for contacting parents, so banning it is a non-starter
Honestly, defining "SNS" is tricky
What are you even saying
Re: #38
Just ban smartphones outright, kids' phones are fine for contacting parents
Some recent SNS usage rules require minors to confirm an accompanying adult is present before they can even use the service—
that actually raises the risk of dangerous adults getting closer and involved.
They're barking up the wrong tree, and ironically that's exactly what sparked the recent SNS regulation movement.
It's clearly safer for kids to be on their own without adult involvement.
Kids should just stick to LINE among themselves
Nobody even uses LINE anymore, old man lol
Requiring an adult to be present on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and the like is exactly backwards—
the real danger is sketchy adults getting involved in the first place.
It defeats the whole purpose.
It really is safer for kids to just do it among themselves
And what are you going to do about that thought!
These days socially awkward people can't get married and become parents anyway, so we're safe
Browsing or online shopping is fine, but anything where individuals can actively post whatever they want should just be regulated
Thanks for that, Xi Jinping (mocking the comment as sounding like pro-censorship CCP propaganda)
If manners get bad enough they might just raise the licensing age
There are fatal/injury accidents every year caused by drivers around 20 packing their car full of friends, after all
Re: #117
Funny how someone who's clueless about trends sure knows a lot about sites where you can make contact with young girls
Today's Gen Z is turning out better-behaved than before, so why not just leave it as is?
Disciplined delinquents might actually be better than today's
Re: #107 type here
Internet access should start at 19
then anonymous forums like 5ch
should probably just be banned for all ages too
since it's a thoroughly toxic site anyway
Seriously though, the real danger of SNS is falling into an echo chamber, so an anonymous forum is actually the lesser evil
This isn't even an age issue to begin with
They fundamentally don't get it
It's not about banning it uniformly—
it's just factoring in the mental maturity that comes with age
and drawing the line roughly at the age you start high school, no?
Conversely, if you don't draw the line by age,
how exactly are you proposing to zone it instead?
Where did the voices of the actual kids who want to use SNS go?
Letting that run unchecked is exactly what got us here, so of course it's not being factored in
> the actual kids themselves
Background and Points of Debate
The Children and Families Agency’s working group is already in the middle of discussing whether to impose a uniform age restriction on SNS use, and this petition amounts to the general public weighing in on that deliberation. The petition itself carries no legal force, and whether it gets adopted depends on the working group’s eventual conclusions—a point the original article doesn’t make explicit. The thread split roughly three ways: ① whether a ban is justified at all (prioritizing safety vs. prioritizing freedom), ② where to draw the line on what counts as “SNS” (does it include contact apps like LINE, or even anonymous forums?), and ③ whether, rather than restricting by age, priority should go to better parenting/discipline at home and cracking down on the adults who abuse SNS. In particular, the fact that LINE is actually used as a school contact network is worth keeping in mind when weighing how practical a blanket ban really is. There was also the point that “the children’s own opinions aren’t being reflected”—but since the petition comes from a citizens’ group, it’s unclear from this article whether the Children and Families Agency’s own review process has any mechanism for hearing children’s voices.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Flash+) thread “Petition Calling for a Ban on SNS Use by Under-16s Through Middle School Age Submitted by Citizens’ Group to Children and Families Agency.”
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