We previously wrote an article about the recent wrongheaded push to ban young people under the age of 16 or 18 (depending on whose idea it is) from social media entirely, or at least heavily restrict it. Well, now the state of Utah has finally done it, and signed it into law today, effective one year from now on March 1, 2024. This new law does not completely ban people under 18 from social media, but in some ways it is worse than that. What it does is 1) prohibits any Utah resident under 18 from opening a social media account, or even maintaining an existing one after March 1, 2024 unless they can provide both proof of age verification as well as proof of parental consent, 2) prohibits anyone of any age from opening a social media account or even maintaining an existing one without proof of age verification, 3) requires social media companies to provide parents with a password or other means to gain full access to their teens' accounts, 4) prohibits anyone under 18 from accessing social media from 10:30 pm and 6:30 am, 5) prohibits social media companies from showing any ads to people under 18, or using any addictive features for people under 18.
If your jaw just dropped after reading all of that, you're not alone!
This is just plain wrong on so many levels. That the age limit is set so high is bad enough, as is the lack of privacy for people under 18, but that not nearly the worst of it. For starters, unlike Josh Hawley's federal bill, there is NO grandfather clause for existing accounts for anyone of any age, whether you are 18 or 80, only a mere one year delay before the law goes into effect. Worse still, the mandatory collection and storage of proof of ID (driver's license, birth certificate, passport, etc) required by this law for ALL ages comes with NO meaningful safeguards to keep such sensitive information from falling into the wrong hands. Fox, meet henhouse. Everyone's privacy is at risk now, more then ever before. Yet another example of adultism backfiring on adults. It is the ultimate Trojan horse from Big Brother.
And of course, the even greater loss of privacy specifically for teens should not be trivialized either, as that will put the most vulnerable young people in even greater danger still, not least from abusive and/or bigoted parents or guardians.
And the ban on addictive features, such as via those notorious algorithms, curiously only applies to people under 18 for some reason. And it would hold the social media companies liable for that and any damages that result. That, along with perhaps some other enhanced safety features, is probably the ONLY marginally good part of the new law, which of course they had to nerf it by age-gating it rather than simply applying it to all ages across the board.
(Why don't we simply make it illegal for any manufacturer, vendor, or company to deliberately engineer a product or service to be more addictive or habit-forming than it would otherwise be in the name of profit, for all ages, across the board, period? Big Tech, Big Tobacco, Big Pharma, Big Food, et al., I'm looking at YOU. That would not completely cure the problem of "limbic capitalism" in practice, of course, but it sure would greatly decrease the frequency and flagrancy of such machinations and manipulations.)
And what else does the law NOT do, but should do for all ages? No data privacy rules, no enhanced safety features, no common carrier rules, or anything like that. Nope, just more of the usual ageist bigotry and control under the guise of concern and protection.
If the new Utah law ever does become the national standard, then this is truly the end of an era, and the beginning of a new and even more dystopian one. And it would also mark at least the beginning of the end of the free and open internet as we knew it.
And by extension, one more cut in the long-running, subtle "death by a thousand cuts" of the First Amendment, and the rest of the Bill of Rights as well.
One thing is for sure. The Overton window has clearly shifted in a VERY questionable direction!
UPDATE: Looks like the 10:30 pm social media curfew would simply be set as the default feature, which parents would be able to adjust at will. (Thank God for small mercies, I guess.)
And there are ways of verifying age that don't compromise privacy or security, but somehow we doubt that those will be used. In any case, teens will always find a way to game the system and get around the restrictions regardless of the method.
But with the general anonymity of social media effectively a thing of the past for all ages, thanks to the new ID verification system, the chilling effect on free speech will remain unless this law gets struck down before it goes into effect. The clock is ticking.
UPDATE 2: Looks like the evidence on which this law is based is less than meets the eye. Far from a mountain of evidence, it is more like a molehill, and a shaky one at that. Not that Big Tech is completely benign (they are not) or doesn't have a dark side (they clearly do), but we need to deal with them proportionately, and not from a place of moral panic.
And look into the other potential causes of mental health declines in young people as well.
UPDATE 4: While research evidence is quite mixed at best, it is probably safe to conclude that, yes, Virginia, there really is a "there", there. But it still does NOT follow that bans or undue age discrimination are the solution, as this problem calls for a scalpel, not a sledgehammer. The Law of Unintended Consequences (aka Murphy's Law) is all too real.
Instead, things that require social media to be safer by design, like the California Kids' Code that goes into effect in 2024, would be a better idea. The next logical step after that would be the COPPA 2.0 bill. Ditto for many other ways to design it to be safer and less addictive as well, such as adding a bit more "friction". Think harm reduction, not prohibition.
See the youth-led advocacy movement Design It For Us, for more information in that regard.
Also note how The Netherlands appears to have dodged the supposedly global teen mental health crisis thus far. Could it be that is at least in part because they are the overall most "permissive" society in the world for children and young people IRL?
UPDATE 5: And don't forget to read Mike Males' famous rebuttals to Jon Haidt as well. To wit, the real mental health crisis is the massive epidemic of toxic, dysfunctional adults, whose toxicity/dysfunction then inevitably rubs off on the young people in their lives. Not to say that social media is not a potential causal factor in such toxicity overall, but clearly silencing the skeptics is another mistake to never make again.
I believe that people should have the right to access the internet. The minimum age to have a social media account should remain 13. Girls and boys who are 13-17 years old should be allowed to use the internet and that includes social media. People should not view the raising of minimum ages as a progressive idea. Raising minimum ages is not reform because reform is different.
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