It's been eye-opening to watch people fall for the "social media is hurting the children" scam. The best and largest observational studies don't show a strong correlation. Studies with an intervention are mixed/the effect isn't large. Extreme and compulsive social media use is bad, but it's almost maybe always a symptom rather than a cause. I saw the trailer for the new Facebook movie last weekend. It's comical reall…
I think you are conflating "the best data we have" with "sufficient data to prove something". I agree with you that the best data we have is inconclusive. Which doesn't mean social media is totally safe. Also it doesn't mean it's totally dangerous. It means there just isn't enough data to let science guide the decision. Science is very slow and very expensive. So since I can't wait another century for their to finall…
Well:
(1) there is no "the general public's gut" -- the general public is millions of separate guts that don't agree with each other;
(2) our political system defines explicit boundaries for the reach of regulatory power, especially where communication, expression, and social interaction are concerned, regardless of anyone's gut feeling on these issues;
(3) science can't be the arbiter here at all, since science only answers "is" questions, but this is an "ought" question; which leads us to
(4) as you alluded to in your final remark, this is a purely cultural issue which families/parents must address according to their own normative values, independently of each other, and there is no legitimate political or legal question here.