Point: Tobacco is especially bad for young children. Therefore we must restrict it for children.
Counterpoint: Caffeine is bad, too. Therefore, should we also outlaw Coca-Cola for children?
The argument that "TikTok is no worse than other social media" is the Counterpoint.
TikTok is very bad for children and adolescents, and we should do the difficult-but-honorable thing and prevent them from using it. If that's difficult, TikTok will have to deal with it.
I don't want to sound pedantic or smug, but I think maybe coca-cola should be banned for children too. Perhaps not illegal but just not for sale for children. I think social media should be similar. 16+ at least
I agree that parents should have much more responsibility on these matters, but not in exchange for state influence, at least in the US. 40M+ adults lack basic literacy to inform themselves well enough to pass on to their kids. Another 65M only have enough literacy to make low-level inferences and compare/contrast [0].
I’d rather govt (which has many channels for advocacy even if flawed) influence choices than corporations completely control the panopticon of choices (where small time spenders have very little consumer power).
But we’re not far apart. As you mention schools (of the state) are a good place to start.
It's not in law, but some supermarkets in New Zealand age restrict energy drinks to 16+.
On the one hand it strikes me as being kind of silly, because those same kids could buy a coffee/iced coffee with just as much sugar and often even more caffeine in it just fine.
On the other hand I do see how the differing marketing/pricing on each product means you can't treat them as equivalent. Probably a good case for voluntary age restrictions by retailers rather than actual laws.
285mg of caffeine in a 300ml bottle. Energy drinks are already regulated to max out at 320mg per litre (so that would be 96 mg max in a 300ml bottle, I guess "weak energy drinks" would be the answer to your question).
Although that does have less sugar - 6.5g per 100ml compared to the 11g per 100ml in Red Bull.
Now I'm curious about what qualifies as an energy drink, I guess it must be based on marketing?
TikTok already limits minimum user age to 13, along the same lines as every other major social media platform which are all shamelessly stealing the same idea for short format videos provided via tailored algorithms. Picking on TikTok while ignoring every other platform doing the same thing simply screams ulterior motivation.
Every generation needs its ultimately inconsequential moral panic after all. TikTok merely got picked out because its background allows easy fingerpointing thanks to a few shifting political trends in the late 2010's.
Online services can only do so much due diligence. Do you want mandatory photo ID & facial verficiation instead? That would be infinitely more harmful to user privacy.
Maybe try presenting actual facts instead of tabling predisposed statements then proceeding to attack anyone who point out how awfully biased they were?
Is it? I was under the impression (after some reading of studies, not just dreaming about the topic) that it was not just GRAS (generally regarded as safe), but several studies showed benefits to regular coffee consumption.
Maybe parents should actually be responsible and do this? I'm getting more and more convinced that smartphones should probably not be in the hands of minors. A dumb phone with call and text capability is probably good for 12+ but social media is a scourge.
I find this argument unintelligible, if not intentionally deceptive. We don't ban tobacco because it is bad, we ban it because it is addictive and causes COPD and cancer. We don't ban bad grammar.
The argument that TikTok is no worse than other social media is not a counterpoint, and has absolutely no relation to any rational argument about whether TikTok should be banned. It's a statement intended to raise a simple, obvious question: Why only ban TikTok when we can ban all social media for children? Is other social media better?
Watch me answer that question about caffeine and bad grammar: It makes sense not to ban caffeine and bad grammar along with cigarettes because we ban cigarettes for being dangerous, and caffeine and bad grammar are somewhere between far less dangerous and not dangerous at all.
You want to ban all social media for children under 16/18? Fine with me. There'll be fewer children walking into you on the sidewalk because they're staring at their phones.
> I first noticed that half a coke zero results in a "colon cleansing" complete with cramps and loose bowels. Over the last 2 days, four other friends/family have experimented and come up with the same results. What is the ingredient that causes this?
Props for using tobacco in your example and not nicotine.
I'm sick of explaining to people that tobacco is/contains a bunch of awful carcinogens and will slowly kill you whereas nicotine in isolation is practically harmless, if addictive.
(Note to downvoters: this isn't some stealth argument in favour of vaping - obviously those have a bunch of extra factors outside of the nicotine, and in relationship to the addictiveness of the nicotine that should be evaluated when determining safety too).
Counterpoint: Caffeine is bad, too. Therefore, should we also outlaw Coca-Cola for children?
The argument that "TikTok is no worse than other social media" is the Counterpoint.
TikTok is very bad for children and adolescents, and we should do the difficult-but-honorable thing and prevent them from using it. If that's difficult, TikTok will have to deal with it.
I suspect that the EU will do this.