Banning Things for Other People Is Easy

> Yes children show poorer impulse control than adults. But aren’t we all somewhat helpless in the face of the mighty tech companies?

The fact that adults can also have somewhat poor impulse control doesn't mean we should disregard the argument. And when it comes to the power of big tech - isn't that what regulation aims to mitigate?

> Brain development continues up until around 25 or so, and so it’s possible that social media does cause longer-term problems with brain development. Possible. Not proved. It’s possible social media causes long-term cognitive decline in adults. Possible. Not proved.

I don't know the studies well enough to know whether it's proved or not, but intuitively this feels like an obvious enough concern to at least be investigating it. Surely there are some general studies about whether mental health issues in early life are more likely to lead to long-term problems?

> By and large, children don’t have money. And even if they do, they don’t have other people who are dependent on it. If children were free to gamble (they sort of already are, what with in-game microtransactions and variable rewards and all the features of gambling, just without the label), I still think that the majority of harm would be borne by adults. Additionally, alongside a child’s gambling ban, we heavily regulate the gambling industry for adults. Children’s social media bans don’t appear to come with similar adult regulatory scrutiny.

Kind of lost me here. I think we should ban gambling for children, even if they don't have money or people dependent on them. Children will steal their parents money to gamble or buy Roblox points.

Yeah, we have regulations on adult gambling. I wouldn't mind more regulations on adult social media use either.

That's not how this works. If you ban vaping, not everyone - and not necessarily most people who vape - would be smoking instead.

"X isn't as bad as Y" is not a good argument in favor of X. They can both be bad.