The Texas social media ban for anyone under 18 thankfully is now dead (for now) as of May 29, 2025 as the Senate ultimately missed a key deadline for a vote on the bill. But we must not rest in our laurels just yet, though. Unfortunately, another bill passed, and was signed into law, that requires app stores to verify age and parental consent for people under 18 to download apps, which takes effect on January 1, 2026 if it doesn't get struck down by the courts in the meantime. Even if that one is not quite as bad.
Thursday, May 29, 2025
Friday, May 23, 2025
Texas' Potential Social Media Ban Strictest In The History Of The World
- Pass comprehensive data privacy legislation for ALL ages which, at a minimum, would ban any and all "surveillance advertising" and "dark patterns". This is best done at the federal level in terms of effectiveness, but states can serve as important trailblazers nonetheless.
- Regulate the algorithms better, audit them, and ban "addictive design features" for ALL ages.
- Perhaps even tax the data mining of users by social media companies.
- Have a voluntary smartphone buyback program like they do for guns.
- Since the latest trend towards "bell to bell" phone-free schools is basically a foregone conclusion at this point, they should apply it to everyone (teachers, staff, administrators, and visitors), not just students.
- If after doing all of that we absolutely MUST set an "age of digital majority", then it should be no higher than 16 (ideally no higher than 15, but certainly NO higher than 16, EVER!), and it should be a "soft" age limit with plenty of generous exceptions, and NO mandatory age verification involving any sensitive personal information whatsoever, period.
- And if after all of that, they still insist on mandatory age verification, then they need to have a billion-dollar guarantee that such information will never fall into the wrong hands, and delay implementation of that requirement until that can be guaranteed. That is, if a person's sensitive information is retained, compromised, or misused in any way, shape or form, that person should be entitled to at least one billion dollars in damages. But Big Tech would NEVER agree to that, of course. And that is by design.
Wednesday, January 1, 2025
What Will 2025 Bring for Youth Rights?
It's 2025 now, and things look pretty bleak for youth rights in general. Not only is the 21 drinking age (and smoking age and toking age) not going away anytime soon, but now we have to deal with the latest social media bans and restrictions on young people. Florida's literally goes into effect today, for example. This law bans anyone under 14 from signing up for or maintaining a social media account at all, and for anyone over 14 but under 16 from doing so without verified parental consent. How they plan to do it without it backfiring on older youth and adults is not clear, but either way, it is very wrong-headed at best. And we know it won't stop there, as it won't be long before it gets raised to 18 and then 19 and then 21 and so on. That is, slopes are MUCH, MUCH slipperier than they appear!
Fortunately, it is being challenged in court, and pending the outcome of such challenges, enforcement is unlikely to begin until at least February at the earliest.
And then of course we have Trump coming back into the office of POTUS for a second term on January 20th. That alone will be a new dark age for America, especially with his puppet master Elon Muskrat pulling his strings. Trump has not exactly been a friend of youth rights, as evident in his raising the federal smoking age to 21 in late 2019. Just like DeSanctimonious did the same for Florida in 2021, after initially opposing it. And of course, Trump and MAGA Republicans and Talibangelicals seeking to systematically revoke women's rights will of course not bode well for youth rights either, if history is any indication.
So buckle up, as it will be a VERY wild ride!