### Issue 2086 - Monday 13th May, 2024

## In Today's Issue

- SA Premier wants to ban kids under 14 using social media
- Oxford study finds the internet is good, actually
- Victorian digital drivers licence is live, no more Apple stickers, Sonos vows to fix app
- Emojis were used in Japan as early as 1988
- Cheap Sony lens, Apple gift cards, LG monitor, Pixel 8a, Anker USB charger, TCL Mini LED TV, Coles Mobile, Hubbl Media Player

## The News

### SA Premier wants to ban kids under 14 using social media

On Mother's Day, South Australia's Premier let loose with a radical plan to ban social media for kids under the age of 14. Not restrict, or get parents permission, just straight up banning them from logging on before their 14th birthday. The SA Premier claims this is necessary because of a "growing body of evidence demonstrating a clear link between social media use and adverse impacts on development". According to the Premier's post on X (oh the irony), they're getting "former Chief Justice of the High Court Robert French AC" to examine "the legal, regulatory and technological pathways for the State Government to impose a ban, while also giving due consideration to the constitutional framework". Basically, it's a brain fart that sounds good to part of the electorate but nobody knows how to actually implement it.

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### Oxford study finds the internet is good, actually

The Oxford Internet Institute has published a new study looking at "over two million individuals' psychological wellbeing from 2006-2021 across 168 countries, in relation to internet use" and found that "across 33,792 different statistical models and subsets of data, 84.9% of associations between internet connectivity and wellbeing were positive and statistically significant". The researchers did however find "4.9% of associations linking internet use and community well-being were negative, with most of those observed among young women aged 15-24yrs", which they find consistent with "previous reports of increased cyberbullying and more negative associations between social media use and depressive symptoms among young women". Basically, we are better off with the internet than without it and the internet is broadly, a good thing - unless you're a young woman.

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### Victorian digital drivers licence is live, no more Apple stickers, Sonos vows to fix app

- Victoria's digital drivers licence is now live. You can get it via the myVicRoads app or the Service Victoria app.
- Apple will no longer going to ship stickers with its products, completing Tim Cook's mission to suck the humanity, joy and whimsy out of Apple.
- The new Sonos app has upset a lot of people, removing features and downgrading accessibility, but Sonos reckons all that stuff will be added back in soon.

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## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Emojis were used in Japan as early as 1988

It's viewed as common knowledge that the emoji we take for granted today can trace its lineage back to a set of icons used on the Pioneer DP-211SW mobile phone, designed by a team at Japanese telco SoftBank in 1997. Not so according to Matt Sephton, who reckons emoji - defined as symbols that can be typed inline with text on a device that can send it as a message to another device - goes as far back as 1994 with the Sharp PI-4000, an early PDA that could connect to a phone to send data messages. If you don't consider being able to send those messages to another device a requirement to be an emoji, just typing a symbol inline with text, then the Sharp PA-8500 PDA from 1988 is even older, containing various emoji that are still in use today. Matt even went to the trouble of re-creating the 1988 emoji!

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## Bargains

- Sony SEL50F18F 50mm f/1.8 lens - $239.94 from Amazon Germany
- 20x Flybuys points on Apple gift cards at Coles this week
- LG 27GR75Q-B 27" 1440p IPS 165Hz monitor - $309 from Scorptec
- $65 cashback on $99 Hubbl Media Player via ShopBack
- Pre-order Google Pixel 8a at Officeworks for $847, get a $200 Officeworks gift card and a $300 gift card trade-in bonus
- Anker 323 33W USB charger - $20 from Amazon
- TCL C855 4K QD-Mini LED 65" TV - $2380 + delivery from Appliance Central
- Coles Mobile (Optus MVNO) 365-day SIM with 210GB data, unlimited calls & SMS - $189 from Coles

## Image Of The Day

Collection of posters on communications (National Library of Australia)

## The End

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