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Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

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Re: Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

#81

Post by perihelions »

pfdietz wrote: post #7

I can't see how this could pass 1st amendment scrutiny.

Here's the current status of state cases, if anyone's curious:

- "FIRE’s lawsuit asks Utah to halt enforcement of the law and declare it invalid. Other states — including New Jersey and Louisiana — are proposing and enacting similar laws that threaten Americans’ fundamental rights. In Arkansas and Ohio, courts have blocked enforcement of these laws."

https://www.thefire.org/news/lawsuit-utahs-clumsy-attempt-ch... ("Lawsuit: Utah’s clumsy attempt to childproof social media is an unconstitutional mess")

I.e. at least four states' legislatures have passed laws like this, federal injunctions have paused two. Two others (Utah, Louisiana) aren't in effect yet.

Re: Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

#82

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

lsiunsuex wrote: post #20

As a Floridian and someone in IT - I'm curious how this will be implemented I can't remember the last time I signed up for a new social network; do they ask age? Is it an ask to Apple / Google to add stronger parental approval? Verify drivers license #? We heard about this days ago on local news and I've been struggling to figure out short of are you 16 years or older how this is gonna get done and how do you fine so…

> I'm curious how this will be implemented

The only way to determine age is to compile a database of gov-issued IDs and related data. Which is an unconstitutional barrier to speech. Which is why this will get struck-down like each similar law.

The part about ID data eventually being shared with 3rd parties, agencies - and/or leaked - is a bonus.

Re: Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

#83

Post by AlecSchueler »

akerl_ wrote: post #2

This makes me think of how, as a child, every site asked “are you over 13”, and I diligently clicked “yes”. Some more clever sites asked for my birth year… forcing me to do the arduous work of taking the current year and subtracting 14. Though I suppose the real plan here is to pass the law and then have the government selectively prosecute social media companies for having users under 16.

I don't think enforcement actually needs to be very tightly controlled. The barriers that are put in place like the one you describe are already enough to create a social milieu where parents and kids with think twice about these things and understand that there is a recognised harm potential.

There's nothing stopping you pouring your youngsters a glass of wine with dinner, but as a society we've made the dangers of alcohol and similar things so well understood that no parent wants to.

Re: Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

#84

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #83
akerl_ wrote: post #2

This makes me think of how, as a child, every site asked “are you over 13”, and I diligently clicked “yes”. Some more clever sites asked for my birth year… forcing me to do the arduous work of taking the current year and subtracting 14. Though I suppose the real plan here is to pass the law and then have the government selectively prosecute social media companies for having users under 16.

I don't think enforcement actually needs to be very tightly controlled. The barriers that are put in place like the one you describe are already enough to create a social milieu where parents and kids with think twice about these things and understand that there is a recognised harm potential. There's nothing stopping you pouring your youngsters a glass of wine with dinner, but as a society we've made the dangers of…

> as a society we've made the dangers of alcohol and similar things so well understood that no parent wants to.

Unfortunately, as a society, we have a much harder time grasping social media threat data. I suppose some of that is due to how news orgs consistently+bizarrely+hugely overstating the actual harms in the data.

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/01/08/leading-save-the-kids-ad...

Re: Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

#85

Post by bhpm »

nickjj wrote: post #75
bhpm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The social media platforms the bill would target include any site that tracks user activity, allows children to upload content or uses addictive features designed to cause compulsive use.

That covers a massive range. "I hope someone likes my review" is not that much different than "I hope someone likes my tweet" or "I hope someone replies to my IG post" or "I hope someone replies to my HN comment". All 4 scenarios trigger the same thing which is setting up a future expectation that's hopefully met while you wait with anticipation of the event. Is that the process they are trying to get a handle on? Pe…

What products are children reviewing?

Re: Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

#86

Post by mbitsnbites »

stronglikedan wrote: post #17
bedhead wrote: post #14

Not sure how I feel about this, but I don't hate it, theoretically. I'm sure it's hopeless in practice. It might be a worthwhile experiment if nothing else. But a piece of legislation will never be an adequate substitute for good parenting.

I'd like to see more science proving that social media is bad for kids before I see lawmakers enacting laws around the theory. That said, I think 16 is too high an age. Kids go into high school at ~13, so I think that would have been a more reasonable age to consider. The hard truth is that most kids don't seem to have access to "good parenting" by any reasonable standard, and parenting is hard with good parenting be…

> I'd like to see more science proving that social media is bad for kids

Smoking tobacco was allowed for children for hundreds of years before it was regulated. Today we can hardly fathom how stupid it would be to allow children to smoke. Social media is much more accessible than cigarettes, far more addictive, and rather than messing with your lungs it messes with your brain and personality.

There are many problems with "waiting for the science". One is that it takes many, many decades to get reliable longitudinal studies on things like addiction and how the brain is affected.

There are so many indications that social media is bad for children (including scientific studies), in many different ways. It really should not be controversial to limit use for children. It's not like it is something that they need.

This book, "Smartphone brain: how a brain out of sync with the times can make us stressed, depressed and anxious" by Swedish MD psychiatrist Anders Hansen, brings up one of the aspects (unfortunately I don't know of an English translation): https://www.amazon.se/Sk%C3%A4rmhj%C3%A4rnan-hj%C3%A4rna-str...

Here's a short video with Anders Hansen: https://youtu.be/DwAx2kRwCRI?t=112

Then there's is of course the question of how to limit the use. But that's another issue.

Re: Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

#87

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

brightball wrote: post #80
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you asserting that parents should not have the rights to determine this for their own children?

Parents don’t have the right to get their kids a tattoo, vote or buy alcohol before a regulated age. Is this different?

So your answer is yes?

Your position is that decisions about youth access to social media should be fully taken from the parents and made by govs instead. Penalties can be assumed from your examples.

This is the reality that you want imposed on parents and children - yes?

Re: Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

#88

Post by matthewdgreen »

andy99 wrote: post #49
causal wrote: post #36

I might be the only one here in favor of this, and wanting to see a federal rollout. It is not reasonable to expect parents to spontaneously agree on a strategy for keeping kids off social media- and that kind of coordination is what it would take, because the kids + social media companies have more than enough time to coordinate workarounds. Have the law put the social media companies on the parents side, or these k…

I'm in favor of kids not using social media, but not of the government forcing this on people nor spinning up whatever absurd regulatory regime is required. And the chance of actually enforcing it is zero anyway. It's no more realistic to expect this to work than to expect all parents to do it as you say. It's just wasted money plus personal intrusion that won't achieve anything.

Several governments have already effectively banned sites like Pornhub by creating regimes where people have to mail their ID to a central clearinghouse (which creates a huge chilling effect.) The article talks about “reasonable age verification measures” and so saying it’s unenforceable seems a little bit premature. Also, you can bet those measures won’t be in any way reasonable once the Florida legislature gets through with them.

Re: Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

#89

Post by captainmuon »

I guess for me it depends on what the law considers "social media".

Is something like the bulletin boards we used to have around the late 90s/early 2000s social media? What about chat rooms? Local social web sites for the school or your city? I think a lot of these things can even be beneficial, if I think about my own experiences as a somewhat introverted teenager.

And what about things like Netflix, Youtube, Podcasts? They can be just as harmful as TokTok and Instagram. Especially on Youtube you have a lot of similar content.

I've found accounts that claim to be official accounts of children's shows - maybe they even are - and which are full of nonsensical videos, just randomly cut together action scenes of multiple episodes. It's like crack for children. Of course YouTube doesn't do anything, they want you to pay for YouTube kids. And the rights holders want you to buy the content, so they leave the poor quality stuff up.

The thing is, exploitative content is always going to be created as long as there are incentives to do so. You can ban stuff, but it's whack-a-mole, and you are going to kill a lot of interesting stuff as collateral damage. The alternative is much harder, change the incentives so we can keep our cool technology and people are not awarded for making harmful stuff with it. But that would require economic and political changes, and people don't like to think about it.

Re: Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

#90

Post by tokai »

Its impressive how people here, that should know better, are cheering this on - just because they are parents themselves. Even disregarding the legality, its not going to work technically. The perceived safety of ones kids really crosses some wires in parents.
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