I had a meeting with my local school district to advocate for no-phone-bell-to-bell and I was amazed at how the admins shifted blame to parents saying “well don’t give your kids a phone.” While I agree with that it’s a simplified answer that isn’t helpful when classrooms use QR codes and kids are rewarded for having a smartphone by gaining popularity among classmates. Interesting to see this is a sort of playbook.
Social media regulation (and other behavioral restrictions) always runs into the brick wall of John Stuart Mill's maximal individual autonomy: "my rights only stop at your nose". Mill never wrote those exact words, but the idea is the cornerstone of modern liberal philosophy and has been the underlying theology of America for at least 100 years.
Take the tobacco regulation example used in this article. People knew that tobacco was bad for you for decades, but smoking bans never went anywhere. Why? Because smokers have a inalienable right to choose to poison their own lungs. That's Mill's Harm Principle ("the only legitimate use of coercion is to prevent physical harm to others") in action. Only when activists started pushing "secondhand smoke kills" did anti-smoking laws take off -- you can't regulate human freedom in any way unless it hurts other people.
Social media is bad: for kids, for teens, for adults, for pretty much everyone. But until we demonstrate that John's use of social media is bad for Mary, we will always run up against the "but I have a right" argument from both of them.
Of course, we could exorcise the ghost of John Stuart Mill from our society and enthrone something other than "maximal individual autonomy" as our highest good. Left-wing wokeness (ala Kendi) is an attempt to do that as is Right-wing postliberalism (ala Deneen). However, that's a long-term undertaking. In the meantime, take a lesson from the tobacco people and figure out how to talk about "secondhand Instagram".
You're correct. And Patrick Deneen has made an excellent case that Lockean liberalism tends to undermine the very moral order (as John Adams said: "a moral and religious people") that it needs to survive.
So yes, I have a significant disagreement with Locke as well. However, there are aspects of Locke I really like (not having slavery for example), so the trick is how to throw out the bathwater without the baby.
I would suggest that a re-institution of an inalienable right of association (or non-association) that does not disappear when one joins a group or starts a business might be a good first step. That would allow the unwinding of Mill's view that even social restrictions based on behavior are illegitimate without opening legal restrictions, which are far touchier.
However, as I said, that's a very long term endeavor. Social media reg needs to happen much faster.
The problem with any social engineering-type regulation is that it never achieves its "stated goal(s)."
What will happen is that tech companies will be forced (eventually) into monitoring ALL content, because of the *purposely* vague language of laws defining their legal boundaries and responsibilities.
This is a trap, it's never going to help kids, it’s going to lead to free speech issues immediately and anyone looking at it honestly can see that.
Earlier "Big Tobacco" was mentioned; what about liquor, beer, or wine manufacturers? Is someone going to sue one of those producers because *they* drove drunk and killed someone? The liquor manufacturer makes liquor, and therefore has "some" responsibility in how things went down? After all, if there was no liquor, beer, or wine, nobody would be drunk to begin with.
Maybe they could limit the size of the liquor bottles. Then they could limit the number you could purchase at a time. Of course, then you would need a liquor database -- to keep track of how much liquor any one person has purchased. However, it will never be known how much liquor they've saved up -- or how much has been provided to them by other people.
This is the same thing that was tried with gun manufacturers. And it's absurd. Laws to limit magazine capacity, really? Because you can't just carry more magazines. Or perhaps, one could do what the Virginia Tech shooter did, and just carry more than one gun. The possibilities are endless.
The truth of the matter is that you can't legislate personal responsibility.
In fact, I would argue that as more regulations are imposed -- people become less responsible (for themselves) in general. At least that's the way it will logically turn out -- it has so far. After all, that's someone else's responsibility.
As for the phones. I live in Florida, and there is a state law about phone usage in school. Students are NOT allowed to use their phone in school, except at specifically allowed times. That's reasonable -- because it applies to everyone -- and it doesn't require that parents do anything other than have their kids follow the rules.
Personal responsibility goes a long way. We all look both ways before crossing the street right? Why? Because even though it's every driver's responsibility to NOT run someone over -- we take it upon ourselves (personal responsibility) for our own safety. Oh, and don't do drugs, they're bad too. 😉👉
The question we will never answer, because every human being sees it differently: Where does personal responsibility end, and collective responsibility start?
When it is one person or institution harming a community without the community's consent, we act quickly to end it. But when the people being harmed consent to the harm, it gets very murky.
But other addictive things are illegal or regulated. Except for that whole non addictive, legal opiate thing that happened and created the booming fentanyl market.
What if we taught personal responsibility and critical thinking in schools, and did it well?
Teenagers and children of all ages should be afforded absolutely free, unregulated access to social media and online sites. Adults, including parents, should stop interfering with young people's online access, which is vital for teens afflicted with widespread, abusive, violent, addicted, and mentally troubled households the 2021 and 2023 Centers for Disease Control surveys reveal. Nothing children and youths encounter online even remotely compares to the direct dangers they encounter in real life, which teens need unfettered online access to connect with others to deal with. Stop the online bans and smartphone bans, except for all ages in settings like classrooms, workplaces, and other venues in which phone use is disruptive.
Having said that, social media should be heavily regulated for all ages to prevent rampant scams, exploitations, and disinformation, which can victimize anyone but now victimize older adults more than teenagers. We grownups need honesty, realism, and humility in this discussion -- which are solely lacking right now.
Children and teens do not have the capacity of adults for early identification of red flags on social media. Their brains are not yet developed to fully protect themselves from sophisticated predators and addictive strategies of profit only motivated companies. That is why parents are legally responsible for the care if children to age of Consent. That is the role of government to protect the vulnerable, along with responsible parents/adults. You have obviously never worked in child welfare where the consequences if predatory or abusive adults on children and teens, whether online or off, is destructive and often permanent to the victims and all of society. The mark of a civilized society is to have mechanisms to protect the vulnerable.
I appreciate comments, but this one is off base. I worked for 15 years with children, teens, and families directly in their homes and in community and wilderness programs, and as a foster parent. I didn’t see teens in my office a couple of times a month like pop-psychologist authors; I saw them in their homes on a daily basis, regularly working with abused teens and those with severely troubled parents and family adults.
I was appointed by Montana’s governor to the state child abuse prevention board, where I served for 4 years, including one year as president. I fully realize the severe troubles abused teens face both from my work and research, which is one reason I don’t buy the claim that social media and “online predators” are any kind of major issue.
Teens are in vastly greater danger from abusive parents, parents’ partners, relatives, household adults, church personnel, school personnel, youth programs like the Scouts, sports personnel, police abuses, etc. (should we ban teens from being around all these as well?) in real life than anything they face online. The CDC’s latest surveys and analyses clearly show the “civilized” U.S. is not just failing to protect children and youth from domestic and community predators, adult behaviors have deteriorated drastically.
Those “adolescent development” notions, fMRI neuroscans, and statistical claims have long been debunked, though advocates still cite them when convenient. It would really help youth and our society if American adults quit boasting about our mature, “developed brains” and actually acted more maturely than teens do – which we’re not doing by any relevant index today.
Indeed, we should start by passing comprehensive data privacy legislation for all ages yesterday, and banning surveillance advertising. That would throw the proverbial One Ring into the fire for good, without violating anyone's civil or human rights:
I’m a bit astonished. I LOVE Jon’s insights into the negative effects of social media, but I’m stunned that we’re still talking about regulating the tech industry. Controlling things never works. Never. We just voted “no” on the progressive belief that the ills of society can be controlled by the government, but here we are doing it again. It’s all about the PARENTS. Yes, the tech industry is only too happy to fob off the responsibility for their actions on the parents, but oddly, in this case they’re also RIGHT. It’s us. It’s we parents who brought our children into the world. It’s we parents who give them their phones, fail to talk to them about their fears, and set the example of screen addiction ourselves. Let’s take back the responsibility. We’re the only ones who can do this. Go to RealLoveParents(dot)com and benefit from 30 years of teaching and observations. Oh, and it’s all free.
Your confidence in your power and ability to shield your children is impressive, albeit misguided. I sincerely wish you luck in your quest to "protect" them, but I suspect that reality will inevitably deliver a wake-up call.
It is up to you to either acknowledge when it happens, or keep deluding yourself of your perceived omnipotence.
A hybrid model probably makes more sense but big tech needs to be brought kicking and screaming to the table and forced to sign KOSA if it gets through the House...In Ireland there is a recently passed law whereby mobile phones are banned in schools and must be handed over each morning to be stored in secured pouches...it will be interesting to see what impacts this has educationally, in terms of classroom management and in behavioural outcomes which can be an indicator of mental health...
Jon, the headline could simply be ‘Business Playbook for Less Regulation’
This isn’t new. It’s not special. The article is fine, but what they’re doing isn’t unique. I wonder if there’s a more basic reason so many businesses operate like this...
"KOSA is a powerful law because it places the responsibility where it belongs - with the tech companies."
I'm not seeing much of an argument in this article that responsibility DOES belong with the tech companies.
There's something of an implied argument that Parental Gatekeeping is insufficiently effective as a practical matter, but none at all as to whether where the ethical responsibility genuinely lies. Manufacturers are allowed to create products that are dangerous if misused or overused by users: food, vehicles, OTC drugs, etc. It's not immediately clear from the article why adult Gatekeeping is morally sufficient for candy and video games, but not scrolling Tiktok.
I'm not saying that case can't be made, but I'm not seeing it made here. This article is unpersuasive because it begs the question and seems to rely most on the Horn Fallacy for an emotional appeal. Just because parental responsibility would be the preferred outcome for the tech companies does not mean that it is not also the ethically correct solution.
Im making over 13k BUCKS a month working part time. I kept hearing other people tell me how much money they can make online so I decided to look into it. Well, it was all true and has totally changed my life. This is what I do....quicksrich.blogspot.com
Social media platforms, as they currently exist, are defective by design. Perhaps we should simply "quarantine" them for ALL ages until the companies that run them fix the defects to an acceptable standard?
Now that the worst flaws of KOSA have apparently been fixed, I will cautiously support it, or rather stop opposing it. But an Australia-style ban or anything requiring mandatory age verification is a bridge too far for anything even remotely resembling a free society IMHO.
Keep in mind that Big Tobacco, despite fighting or pretending to fight it at first, eventually came to fully support Tobacco 21 laws. They couldn't WAIT to throw young people under the bus to protect their own ill-gotten bottom lines, apparently.
How about making it illegal to own/operate a smartphone before age 16?
How about making social media default so that everyone has the “kid protections” against porn, addictive features, stranger messaging, account privacy, etc unless you actively pursue that through voluntary identification?
The simpler, the more straightforward, the less this leads to a universal mandatory digital ID dystopia, the better.
Yes, regulation is essential to protect our kids!! Like tobacco these software platforms are addictive, so the consumer is unable to make autonomous choices. But more dangerous than tobacco because the software can be AND IS designed to be increasingly addictive through features that hook us psychologically, especially children.
I had a meeting with my local school district to advocate for no-phone-bell-to-bell and I was amazed at how the admins shifted blame to parents saying “well don’t give your kids a phone.” While I agree with that it’s a simplified answer that isn’t helpful when classrooms use QR codes and kids are rewarded for having a smartphone by gaining popularity among classmates. Interesting to see this is a sort of playbook.
Related depictions of corporate wrongdoing by Hollywood
HOT COFFEE
SICKO
ERIN BROKOVICH
AN UNREASONABLE MAN
THANK YOU FOR SMOKING
INSIDER
TITANIC
DR STRANGELOVE
....Direct Message me and I may provide links to relevant scenes
So parents have no right to stop schools from "gender transitioning" little Jennifer...
...but Jennifer's use of a smartphone is entirely the parents responsibility.
Got it. Seems like the common theme is school administrators eschewing responsibility.
But... but... Freedom! Liberty! Parents' Rights!
Social media regulation (and other behavioral restrictions) always runs into the brick wall of John Stuart Mill's maximal individual autonomy: "my rights only stop at your nose". Mill never wrote those exact words, but the idea is the cornerstone of modern liberal philosophy and has been the underlying theology of America for at least 100 years.
Take the tobacco regulation example used in this article. People knew that tobacco was bad for you for decades, but smoking bans never went anywhere. Why? Because smokers have a inalienable right to choose to poison their own lungs. That's Mill's Harm Principle ("the only legitimate use of coercion is to prevent physical harm to others") in action. Only when activists started pushing "secondhand smoke kills" did anti-smoking laws take off -- you can't regulate human freedom in any way unless it hurts other people.
Social media is bad: for kids, for teens, for adults, for pretty much everyone. But until we demonstrate that John's use of social media is bad for Mary, we will always run up against the "but I have a right" argument from both of them.
Of course, we could exorcise the ghost of John Stuart Mill from our society and enthrone something other than "maximal individual autonomy" as our highest good. Left-wing wokeness (ala Kendi) is an attempt to do that as is Right-wing postliberalism (ala Deneen). However, that's a long-term undertaking. In the meantime, take a lesson from the tobacco people and figure out how to talk about "secondhand Instagram".
America was founded on Lockean Liberalism, for better or worse, of which Mill was simply an ideological descendant.
You're correct. And Patrick Deneen has made an excellent case that Lockean liberalism tends to undermine the very moral order (as John Adams said: "a moral and religious people") that it needs to survive.
So yes, I have a significant disagreement with Locke as well. However, there are aspects of Locke I really like (not having slavery for example), so the trick is how to throw out the bathwater without the baby.
I would suggest that a re-institution of an inalienable right of association (or non-association) that does not disappear when one joins a group or starts a business might be a good first step. That would allow the unwinding of Mill's view that even social restrictions based on behavior are illegitimate without opening legal restrictions, which are far touchier.
However, as I said, that's a very long term endeavor. Social media reg needs to happen much faster.
The problem with any social engineering-type regulation is that it never achieves its "stated goal(s)."
What will happen is that tech companies will be forced (eventually) into monitoring ALL content, because of the *purposely* vague language of laws defining their legal boundaries and responsibilities.
This is a trap, it's never going to help kids, it’s going to lead to free speech issues immediately and anyone looking at it honestly can see that.
Earlier "Big Tobacco" was mentioned; what about liquor, beer, or wine manufacturers? Is someone going to sue one of those producers because *they* drove drunk and killed someone? The liquor manufacturer makes liquor, and therefore has "some" responsibility in how things went down? After all, if there was no liquor, beer, or wine, nobody would be drunk to begin with.
Maybe they could limit the size of the liquor bottles. Then they could limit the number you could purchase at a time. Of course, then you would need a liquor database -- to keep track of how much liquor any one person has purchased. However, it will never be known how much liquor they've saved up -- or how much has been provided to them by other people.
This is the same thing that was tried with gun manufacturers. And it's absurd. Laws to limit magazine capacity, really? Because you can't just carry more magazines. Or perhaps, one could do what the Virginia Tech shooter did, and just carry more than one gun. The possibilities are endless.
The truth of the matter is that you can't legislate personal responsibility.
In fact, I would argue that as more regulations are imposed -- people become less responsible (for themselves) in general. At least that's the way it will logically turn out -- it has so far. After all, that's someone else's responsibility.
As for the phones. I live in Florida, and there is a state law about phone usage in school. Students are NOT allowed to use their phone in school, except at specifically allowed times. That's reasonable -- because it applies to everyone -- and it doesn't require that parents do anything other than have their kids follow the rules.
Personal responsibility goes a long way. We all look both ways before crossing the street right? Why? Because even though it's every driver's responsibility to NOT run someone over -- we take it upon ourselves (personal responsibility) for our own safety. Oh, and don't do drugs, they're bad too. 😉👉
The question we will never answer, because every human being sees it differently: Where does personal responsibility end, and collective responsibility start?
When it is one person or institution harming a community without the community's consent, we act quickly to end it. But when the people being harmed consent to the harm, it gets very murky.
But other addictive things are illegal or regulated. Except for that whole non addictive, legal opiate thing that happened and created the booming fentanyl market.
What if we taught personal responsibility and critical thinking in schools, and did it well?
Teenagers and children of all ages should be afforded absolutely free, unregulated access to social media and online sites. Adults, including parents, should stop interfering with young people's online access, which is vital for teens afflicted with widespread, abusive, violent, addicted, and mentally troubled households the 2021 and 2023 Centers for Disease Control surveys reveal. Nothing children and youths encounter online even remotely compares to the direct dangers they encounter in real life, which teens need unfettered online access to connect with others to deal with. Stop the online bans and smartphone bans, except for all ages in settings like classrooms, workplaces, and other venues in which phone use is disruptive.
Having said that, social media should be heavily regulated for all ages to prevent rampant scams, exploitations, and disinformation, which can victimize anyone but now victimize older adults more than teenagers. We grownups need honesty, realism, and humility in this discussion -- which are solely lacking right now.
Children and teens do not have the capacity of adults for early identification of red flags on social media. Their brains are not yet developed to fully protect themselves from sophisticated predators and addictive strategies of profit only motivated companies. That is why parents are legally responsible for the care if children to age of Consent. That is the role of government to protect the vulnerable, along with responsible parents/adults. You have obviously never worked in child welfare where the consequences if predatory or abusive adults on children and teens, whether online or off, is destructive and often permanent to the victims and all of society. The mark of a civilized society is to have mechanisms to protect the vulnerable.
I appreciate comments, but this one is off base. I worked for 15 years with children, teens, and families directly in their homes and in community and wilderness programs, and as a foster parent. I didn’t see teens in my office a couple of times a month like pop-psychologist authors; I saw them in their homes on a daily basis, regularly working with abused teens and those with severely troubled parents and family adults.
I was appointed by Montana’s governor to the state child abuse prevention board, where I served for 4 years, including one year as president. I fully realize the severe troubles abused teens face both from my work and research, which is one reason I don’t buy the claim that social media and “online predators” are any kind of major issue.
Teens are in vastly greater danger from abusive parents, parents’ partners, relatives, household adults, church personnel, school personnel, youth programs like the Scouts, sports personnel, police abuses, etc. (should we ban teens from being around all these as well?) in real life than anything they face online. The CDC’s latest surveys and analyses clearly show the “civilized” U.S. is not just failing to protect children and youth from domestic and community predators, adult behaviors have deteriorated drastically.
Those “adolescent development” notions, fMRI neuroscans, and statistical claims have long been debunked, though advocates still cite them when convenient. It would really help youth and our society if American adults quit boasting about our mature, “developed brains” and actually acted more maturely than teens do – which we’re not doing by any relevant index today.
Example: 82% of cyberbullied teens are also bullied by parents and grownups at home (see CDC, cited at https://mikemales.substack.com/p/82-of-cyberbullied-teens-are-also ). Doesn’t that strike anyone here as important? You’re welcome to review my substack posts and confirm them from linked data and studies. If you find mistakes, please let me know. https://mikemales.substack.com/publish/home?utm_source=menu
Amen
Adults can be vulnerable too though. Just saying.
Indeed, we should start by passing comprehensive data privacy legislation for all ages yesterday, and banning surveillance advertising. That would throw the proverbial One Ring into the fire for good, without violating anyone's civil or human rights:
https://www.eff.org/wp/privacy-first-better-way-address-online-harms
Amen to that! Very well-said as usual, Mike!
I’m a bit astonished. I LOVE Jon’s insights into the negative effects of social media, but I’m stunned that we’re still talking about regulating the tech industry. Controlling things never works. Never. We just voted “no” on the progressive belief that the ills of society can be controlled by the government, but here we are doing it again. It’s all about the PARENTS. Yes, the tech industry is only too happy to fob off the responsibility for their actions on the parents, but oddly, in this case they’re also RIGHT. It’s us. It’s we parents who brought our children into the world. It’s we parents who give them their phones, fail to talk to them about their fears, and set the example of screen addiction ourselves. Let’s take back the responsibility. We’re the only ones who can do this. Go to RealLoveParents(dot)com and benefit from 30 years of teaching and observations. Oh, and it’s all free.
Your confidence in your power and ability to shield your children is impressive, albeit misguided. I sincerely wish you luck in your quest to "protect" them, but I suspect that reality will inevitably deliver a wake-up call.
It is up to you to either acknowledge when it happens, or keep deluding yourself of your perceived omnipotence.
Knowingly putting out a product with features that are addictive is irresponsible to society and tech companies should be held accountable.
A hybrid model probably makes more sense but big tech needs to be brought kicking and screaming to the table and forced to sign KOSA if it gets through the House...In Ireland there is a recently passed law whereby mobile phones are banned in schools and must be handed over each morning to be stored in secured pouches...it will be interesting to see what impacts this has educationally, in terms of classroom management and in behavioural outcomes which can be an indicator of mental health...
Jon, the headline could simply be ‘Business Playbook for Less Regulation’
This isn’t new. It’s not special. The article is fine, but what they’re doing isn’t unique. I wonder if there’s a more basic reason so many businesses operate like this...
Strange
Who can we trust to take care of our children more? The government, or ourselves?
"KOSA is a powerful law because it places the responsibility where it belongs - with the tech companies."
I'm not seeing much of an argument in this article that responsibility DOES belong with the tech companies.
There's something of an implied argument that Parental Gatekeeping is insufficiently effective as a practical matter, but none at all as to whether where the ethical responsibility genuinely lies. Manufacturers are allowed to create products that are dangerous if misused or overused by users: food, vehicles, OTC drugs, etc. It's not immediately clear from the article why adult Gatekeeping is morally sufficient for candy and video games, but not scrolling Tiktok.
I'm not saying that case can't be made, but I'm not seeing it made here. This article is unpersuasive because it begs the question and seems to rely most on the Horn Fallacy for an emotional appeal. Just because parental responsibility would be the preferred outcome for the tech companies does not mean that it is not also the ethically correct solution.
Im making over 13k BUCKS a month working part time. I kept hearing other people tell me how much money they can make online so I decided to look into it. Well, it was all true and has totally changed my life. This is what I do....quicksrich.blogspot.com
Social media platforms, as they currently exist, are defective by design. Perhaps we should simply "quarantine" them for ALL ages until the companies that run them fix the defects to an acceptable standard?
Now that the worst flaws of KOSA have apparently been fixed, I will cautiously support it, or rather stop opposing it. But an Australia-style ban or anything requiring mandatory age verification is a bridge too far for anything even remotely resembling a free society IMHO.
Keep in mind that Big Tobacco, despite fighting or pretending to fight it at first, eventually came to fully support Tobacco 21 laws. They couldn't WAIT to throw young people under the bus to protect their own ill-gotten bottom lines, apparently.
How about making it illegal to own/operate a smartphone before age 16?
How about making social media default so that everyone has the “kid protections” against porn, addictive features, stranger messaging, account privacy, etc unless you actively pursue that through voluntary identification?
The simpler, the more straightforward, the less this leads to a universal mandatory digital ID dystopia, the better.
Yes, regulation is essential to protect our kids!! Like tobacco these software platforms are addictive, so the consumer is unable to make autonomous choices. But more dangerous than tobacco because the software can be AND IS designed to be increasingly addictive through features that hook us psychologically, especially children.