Regarding age gating for social media: If government intervention is unconstitutional, then what is your proposed solution? Kids driving themselves nuts with these sites is not great for the republic.
2. The go-to answer to your question is "parents", although that raises a tricky follow-up question which is finding the line for when the state should intervene between bad parents and kids. There's a couple bright lines (physical or nutritional abuse), and a whole lot of gray ones. (It's a good discussion to continually have though.)
On the second dimension, I'd start with putting the question back on you with a slight reframe though: when should a problem be solved by civil society (individuals talking and making choices for themselves, social groups, churches, etc) and when should it be solved by the state? When the state solves something it always comes with legal implications (police, jail time, fines, etc), so that's a big hammer to swing.
For me, the popularity of social media has been in freefall for the past ~5 years as we're starting to recognize the (very real) harms (that doesn't seem to have translated into a drop in actual usage, but that feels like something that would naturally follow). I'm hopeful we can figure this out own our own without sacrificing our freedoms, but I'm interested to hear where you would draw the line.
I think Haidt has given some fantastic suggestions in his newer book (The Anxious Generation) and research into the effects of social media on kids.
The short versus that he sees it as a group action problem, which has a collective action solution. Parental controls, changing social norms, giving kids more freedoms in other areas, etc. all combine to impact this. It seems to be doable.
Regarding age gating for social media: If government intervention is unconstitutional, then what is your proposed solution? Kids driving themselves nuts with these sites is not great for the republic.
It's an interesting question with two very separate dimensions, and they need to be tackled separately:
1. Age gating is not technically feasible without adults also needing to verify their identities. That has extremely serious privacy, chilled-speech, and even legal implications -- detailed here https://expression.fire.org/p/the-papers-please-era-of-the-internet
2. The go-to answer to your question is "parents", although that raises a tricky follow-up question which is finding the line for when the state should intervene between bad parents and kids. There's a couple bright lines (physical or nutritional abuse), and a whole lot of gray ones. (It's a good discussion to continually have though.)
On the second dimension, I'd start with putting the question back on you with a slight reframe though: when should a problem be solved by civil society (individuals talking and making choices for themselves, social groups, churches, etc) and when should it be solved by the state? When the state solves something it always comes with legal implications (police, jail time, fines, etc), so that's a big hammer to swing.
For me, the popularity of social media has been in freefall for the past ~5 years as we're starting to recognize the (very real) harms (that doesn't seem to have translated into a drop in actual usage, but that feels like something that would naturally follow). I'm hopeful we can figure this out own our own without sacrificing our freedoms, but I'm interested to hear where you would draw the line.
I think Haidt has given some fantastic suggestions in his newer book (The Anxious Generation) and research into the effects of social media on kids.
The short versus that he sees it as a group action problem, which has a collective action solution. Parental controls, changing social norms, giving kids more freedoms in other areas, etc. all combine to impact this. It seems to be doable.