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Originally posted by the Voice of America.
Voice of America content is produced by the Voice of America,
a United States federal government-sponsored entity, and is in
the public domain.

Australia's plan to ban children from social media proves popular, problematic

by Associated Press

MELBOURNE, Australia --

How do you remove children from the harms of social media? Politically
the answer appears simple in Australia, but practically the solution
could be far more difficult.

The Australian government's plan to ban children from social media
platforms including X, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram until their 16th
birthdays is politically popular. The opposition party says it would
have done the same after winning elections due within months if the
government hadn't moved first.

The leaders of all eight Australian states and mainland territories
have unanimously backed the plan, although Tasmania, the smallest
state, would have preferred the threshold was set at 14.

But a vocal assortment of experts in the fields of technology and child
welfare have responded with alarm. More than 140 such experts signed an
open letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese condemning the 16-year
age limit as "too blunt an instrument to address risks effectively."

Details of what is proposed and how it will be implemented are scant.
More will be known when legislation is introduced into the Parliament
next week.

## The concerned teen

Leo Puglisi, a 17-year-old Melbourne student who founded online
streaming service 6 News Australia at the age of 11, laments that
lawmakers imposing the ban lack the perspective on social media that
young people have gained by growing up in the digital age.

"With respect to the government and prime minister, they didn't grow up
in the social media age, they're not growing up in the social media
age, and what a lot of people are failing to understand here is that,
like it or not, social media is a part of people's daily lives," Leo
said.

"It's part of their communities, it's part of work, it's part of
entertainment, it's where they watch content -- young people aren't
listening to the radio or reading newspapers or watching free-to-air TV
-- and so it can't be ignored. The reality is this ban, if implemented,
is just kicking the can down the road for when a young person goes on
social media," Leo added.

Leo has been applauded for his work online. He was a finalist in his
home state Victoria's nomination for the Young Australian of the Year
award, which will be announced in January. His nomination bid credits
his platform with "fostering a new generation of informed, critical
thinkers."

## The grieving mom-turned-activist

One of the proposal's supporters, cyber safety campaigner Sonya Ryan,
knows from personal tragedy how dangerous social media can be for
children.

Her 15-year-old daughter Carly Ryan was murdered in 2007 in South
Australia state by a 50-year-old pedophile who pretended to be a
teenager online. In a grim milestone of the digital age, Carly was the
first person in Australia to be killed by an online predator.

"Kids are being exposed to harmful pornography, they're being fed
misinformation, there are body image issues, there's sextortion, online
predators, bullying. There are so many different harms for them to try
and manage and kids just don't have the skills or the life experience
to be able to manage those well," Sonya Ryan said.

"The result of that is we're losing our kids. Not only what happened to
Carly, predatory behavior, but also we're seeing an alarming rise in
suicide of young people," she added.

Sonya Ryan is part of a group advising the government on a national
strategy to prevent and respond to child sexual abuse in Australia.

She wholeheartedly supports Australia setting the social media age
limit at 16.

"We're not going to get this perfect," she said. "We have to make sure
that there are mechanisms in place to deal with what we already have
which is an anxious generation and an addicted generation of children
to social media."

A major concern for social media users of all ages is the legislation's
potential privacy implications.

Age estimation technology has proved inaccurate, so digital
identification appears to be the most likely option for assuring a user
is at least 16.

Australia's eSafety Commissioner, an office that describes itself as
the world's first government agency dedicated to keeping people safer
online, has suggested in planning documents adopting the role of
authenticator. The government would hold the identity data and the
platforms would discover through the commissioner whether a potential
account holder was 16.

## The skeptical internet expert

Tama Leaver, professor of internet studies at Curtin University, fears
that the government will make the platforms hold the users'
identification data instead.

The government has already said the onus will be on the platforms,
rather than on children or their parents, to ensure everyone meets the
age limit.

"The worst possible outcome seems to be the one that the government may
be inadvertently pushing towards, which would be that the social media
platforms themselves would end up being the identity arbiter," Leaver
said.

"They would be the holder of identity documents which would be
absolutely terrible because they have a fairly poor track record so far
of holding on to personal data well," he added.

The platforms will have a year once the legislation has become law to
work out how the ban can be implemented.

Ryan, who divides her time between Adelaide in South Australia and Fort
Worth, Texas, said privacy concerns should not stand in the way of
removing children from social media.

"What is the cost if we don't? If we don't put the safety of our
children ahead of profit and privacy?" she asked.

#social-media #australia #internet #privacy #mental-health #kids #children #age-limit #age-verification #minimum-age

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When all of us are satisfied with enough

We will all have enough.

#billionaire #billionaires #wealthy #reprobates #plutomaniacs #plutocrats #robber-barons #mentally-ill #entrepreneurs #capitalists #capitalism #mental-health

I have something the billionaires will never have.

I have enough.

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https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/health-coronavirus-students/
###As U.S. schools shuttered, student mental health cratered, Reuters survey finds

With schools nationwide locked down amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the mental health consequences on students have come into a sharp focus.

Reuters surveyed school districts nationwide in February to assess the mental health impacts of full or partial school shutdowns. The districts, large and small, rural and urban, serve more than 2.2 million students across the United States.

Of the 74 districts that responded, 74% reported multiple indicators of increased mental health stresses among students. More than half reported rises in mental health referrals and counseling.

Nearly 90% of responding districts cited higher rates of absenteeism or disengagement, metrics commonly used to gauge student emotional health. The lack of in person education was a driver of these warning signs of trouble, more than half of districts said.

The stresses didn’t affect only students: 57% of responding districts reported an increase in teachers and support staff seeking assistance.

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So they updated the look of cigarettes the other day....

Little dude is grumpy but he has a right to be this time!I get it. Smoking is bad. Honestly. It tastes bad, it smells bad, it’s the overall leading cause of preventable death. It’s been years now since they upped the price of cigarettes by 500%, and they also removed the ‘main concern’ ingredient warnings of tar, nicotine, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, hydrogen cyanide and benzene emission numbers from the side of packages . They removed these because they worried that having them on there would lull us silly smokers into a false sense of security by having us think that by choosing a product with lower numbers, we would be safer —- no, now we just have no freaking idea what those #’s are.

And now they have also enforced a ‘plain packaging’ in brown. No longer can I ask for Export A ‘Gold’ or ‘Blue’ but I can ask for Export A ‘smooth’. They have also removed any fancy lettering or embossing and it is now just plain text. Also no text at all on the cigarette itself.

I’m ok with this. If the ugliness helps people to despise smoking, give it up or never start then awesome. I’m fine with not looking at the list of poisons I’m inhaling, as for the pictures – those have been on there forever now and I’m sort of desensitized, likewise the insert that provides a toll-free number and website etc. of How to Quit comes in different colours and we each guess what colour it’s going to be before we open the pack. Sort of fun right?

Anyhow – what myself and Mr. Grumpy Purple Unicorn are less ok with is this:

Look at the fancy labels on these big boys! Stylized glass, fancy writing – I should note that these bottles belong to a Brother-Sister team that hung out with us on New Years and were not consumed by me. I am still sober. ‘Russian winter wheat and pure glacial waters’ made with passion! How come there’s no picture on here of a person being punched in their face by their drunk partner? Or I dunno… someone with liver failure, or some 22 year old protruding from a car window?

You might say ‘Well hey now, you know most people can moderate their drinking really well!’ – well isn’t that special! However according to this article of systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016 published in 2018 it says: Among the population aged 15–49 years, alcohol use was the leading risk factor globally in 2016, with 3·8% (95% UI 3·2–4·3) of female deaths and 12·2% (10·8–13·6) of male deaths attributable to alcohol use. And never mind the fact that ONE time of accidentally over-drinking can cause death.

Drinking is so normalized that they name wines in relation to retro housewife stereotypes like this Mad Housewife wine.

If you go to a gathering and say “No thank you” to the ceremonial wine poured into your glass it often is followed up by a “Just a little bit? We’re having a toast.” or “Oh, would you like something else then? Perhaps a beer or a rye and soda?” Once they hear the response of “No, I actually don’t drink any alcohol at all” they follow up with either “Good for you, I really shouldn’t drink either but really I don’t drink very much, I moderate.” (as though some sort of guilt makes them feel as though they need to express some sort of camaraderie or something?) Or it’s an outright “Oh why – do you have a drinking problem?” Since quitting drinking I have been FAR more aware of this happening, as well as VERY aware of how often I did that to others.

Alcohol doesn’t just kill the people who drink it via the direct route of health related issues. There is harm caused by drinking and driving, injuring oneself while impaired, and the very common effect of injuring others while in a drunken rage or neglect/risk of harm of children due to alcohol. There is also the less talked about but HUGE implication of all the mental health issues, as stated in this article Neurotransmitters in alcoholism: A review of neurobiological and genetic studies –

“alcohol is a powerful drug. It affects several neurological pathways and causes significant changes in the brain. Some of the neurological pathways known to be affected by alcohol consumption include the dopaminergic, serotoninergic, γ-amino butyric acid (GABA) and glutamate pathways.” In fact according to this article What is the most dangerous drug? Alcohol takes top place when you add up all the factors of harm to users as well as harm to others. Passing out drunk, becoming vulnerable, choking on one’s vomit, poor choices made that affect you for a lifetime due to drinking.

It’s also worth saying also that there is a direct correlation to drinkers and smokers. In a study of ALCOHOL AND TOBACCO it showed many interesting links including one that Rose and colleagues (34) showed that drinking alcohol enhances the pleasure reported from smoking cigarettes. This study was from 2007 but there are other related studies that show similar findings that you can find if you poke about. This study just sort of expressed these findings well in layman’s terms.

Alcohol has been proven to be the ‘gateway drug’ in this article – Prioritizing Alcohol Prevention: Establishing Alcohol as the Gateway Drug and Linking Age of First Drink With Illicit Drug Use .

If you want to read a good full summary and don’t have access to pubmed documents then read here: The REAL Gateway Drug is 100% Legal ”

“Alcohol was the most widely used substance among respondents, initiated earliest, and also the first substance most commonly used in the progression of substance use,” the researchers concluded .

All of this but alcohol is still wrapped up in such a pretty little package of deception.

I’m not calling for prohibition – but maybe alcohol should also come with a warning? A number to call for help? Maybe Those in Control should go after the alcohol companies and force a crack down on the fancy labelling and luring deceptive descriptions? Maybe they should show a picture of a child crying while the parent is passed out and unable to care for them? Or instead of the funny media references in television shows , the trendy stereotyping in ads or sexy happy times in music videos they should show the accuracy of the risks of it. You know, so that in Real Life ™ (and we know real life mimics media far more than media mimics real life) people can stop laughing at alcoholism as normal and stop pushing drunkenness as regular ‘good time’ behaviour.

Of course that wouldn’t happen because drinking is SO ingrained into us as part of our culture that many of our politicians and higher ups have also been afflicted with alcoholism and of course the money made from the production of alcoholic beverages is too hard to part with.

Just my thoughts at 5:30 am on a Friday morning.

#media #mental-health #smoking #sobriety

Originally posted at: https://inthewind.ca/so-they-updated-the-look-of-cigarettes-the-other-day/