I agree with the premise of this bill — that social media are harmful to young people — but disagree with the conclusion that therefore there must be a law. There are lots of things that can be harmful to children, like television, busy streets, caffeinated sugary sodas, and weight training, and we trust parents and other adults to guide children through those dangers, teaching them wise self-restraint along the way. I don't see that social media belong to a different category of danger that requires legislation.
Parenting is hard, and not everyone succeeds, but that doesn't mean that we need to legislate away all danger, especially at the cost of privacy and potentially beneficial engagement with friends and family.
These are the same busybody nanny-staters who tell us that it is "illegal" for our kids to drink, drive cars, buy guns, or share pornographic pictures of themselves.
But seriously - if you think social media is harmful to children, I don't see why you would oppose making it illegal. It would be illegal, neglect, for example, to let your children wander into a busy street. Why should it be legal to let your children come to harm in other ways?
I'm not actually sure that social media is harmful, or how harmful, or what qualifies as social media or as "use" - but if we grant that it is harmful, it should be illegal. Doing otherwise just adds another advantage to children with good parents. Making it illegal will, hopefully, reduce the amount of harm done to those who do not have the maturity to decide things for themselves.
I'm not sure it ought be "neglectful" or "illegal" to let kids wander in a busy street. Every day I see a huge swarm of kids, including 5th and 6th graders in elementary school, walk home without parents from school. That includes crossing intersections and commercial venues. I don't think that as neglectful activity.
In Japan there's a popular TV show where kids (max age 6-7) wander around their town to do shopping chores. Despite the fact that this is a TV show and thus there are going to be employees secretly posted around with cameras, it still displays a cultural sensibility on when children should begin to be trained to be independent.
Now, should kindergarteners cross a very busy street alone? Probably not. But in the city I'm talking about each family makes their own choices and the sum of all this is one of the safest places in the world. Police cars do not regularly patrol around and the community is very, very prosperous and optimistic.
Meanwhile we have a recent story of a mom who got charged for child endangerment and convicted and sentenced because she let her kids walk alone.
You're missing an important distinction that I may not have made clear: a lot of activities that can be harmful to children can also be valuable. There's a lot of harmless fun on television, walking alone to the park or a neighbor's house fosters a healthy sense of independence, weight training done safely can help build strength and confidence and sugary caffeinated sodas in moderation are… tasty? (Not sure about the benefit on that last one.)
Like these activities, social media can have their benefits even for young people: contact with friends and family far away, connection with others with similar interests, and a broader view of the world, among others. With guidance, kids can experience those benefits without too much of the harm.
In most of the cases you point out — drinking, driving, buying firearms, and sharing pornographic pictures of themselves — any good there may be is vastly outweighed by the dangers. I don't believe the harm so disproportionate with social media, but I suppose others might disagree.
I agree with you except that weight training/exercise has not only been shown to be safe, but also healthy in kids with normal health and development. There are extremes for sure, but the old adage that weight lifting will hurt you if you’re too young hasn’t held up to current research on the topic.
Proper weight training won’t hurt. But I got (and a lot of kids into sports/athletics get) hernia(s) because teenage hormones and physical reality are often at odds.
That may well be. I was trying to illustrate the broad range of activities in which we accept some risk to children, and may have been ambitious beyond my knowledge.
The definition of social media in this bill defines all websites with comment sections as social media. This means they don't want your kids to even have access to the news on the web.
I also can't believe how many other comments (not yours) in the comments on this post are like "this is a good idea" and "we should consider this" and etc.
I'm amazed. Most of the people on here responding as such are, I'm guessing, are people from my generation: "millenials" who grew up natively on the internet, probably even hung out on Slashdot and etc when that was big. Slashdot had a lot of problems (so does this site, not gonna lie) but OMG I can't imagine a post like this appearing on 2005 era Slashdot and 1/3 of the people being like "but why not this probably is a good idea".
I thought when my generation grew up and had kids, we'd try to stand up for digital rights as being important for the next generation, because we experienced why it was important ourselves. I am depressed by just how wrong I was.
> I thought when my generation grew up and had kids, we'd try to stand up for digital rights as being important for the next generation,
Yeah, but the internet we had has kids is far different than what we have today.
IMO the biggest difference is that it used to cost things to be on the internet: time and/or money. Sites weren't just GUI/WYSIWYG. You had to spend time building them. You had to have initiative. People's goals were different (I feel) than today. Knowledge and transfer of that knowledge was a big deal.
Now it seems like everything is about making a buck. You can't just let kids go wild online. There is some seriously dark stuff and it doesn't take a lot to get there. Hell, you can't even open some apps on a default install of something like macOS without the risk of pornography showing up.
Parenting is hard, and not everyone succeeds, but that doesn't mean that we need to legislate away all danger, especially at the cost of privacy and potentially beneficial engagement with friends and family.