No kidding. How do we expect to reduce social media consumption for kids when their parents refuse to leave their phones alone? Parents and other adults perpetuate media consumption. Kids are just following their lead.
Remember - no government lets a crisis go to waste. This is already being used to further more profit by Big Tech with age verification and biometric data harvesting. If we think corporations care about our children, we are sorely mistaken.
The only organisation strong enough to deal with corporations is the state. I can't really see any other path than taking control over the state. That would be taking control over the corporations themselves, but communism is considered even more radical than democracy.
The perfect is the enemy of the good. Jon et al never said we could stop all the harms of social media this way. This is just a start; for parents to hear it's harming their kids is a start. And people here might know that, but I know lots of people who don't know this and don't know they are letting their kids be harmed.
I don’t think this author understands that none of this has anything to do with “protecting kids.”
Why are 10-year-olds running around with cell phones and email addresses?
Why are teenagers given debit cards?
These are parental choices, not under the direction or jurisdiction of the federal government.
But that gets to a deeper point.
How much *unaccountable* authority (because we know it always is) should the government have over *our children?* 🤔
Porn, it’s been there forever, just like bullies have. I could look at naked women all day long in the early 90s, but nobody was worried that it might become an existential crisis.
That was almost 35-years ago! But just now -- right now -- it’s an existential problem?
The same politicians who cry about porn on the Internet, and the need to "protect children" -- are the same people who are OK with Drag Queen Story Hour.
"How much *unaccountable* authority (because we know it always is) should the government have".
Thats your main problem there. Thats the thing you need to solve.
You can't go on trying to fight or avoid both the big corporations AND the government for all future. The problems won't go away. They will creep on closer on you.
You need to take control of the government. MAKE it accountable. That they only way. "Democracy" they used to call this ideal.
I see a censored future, like Great Britain, where tech monopolies and governments together abuse the people, while narcissistic psychopaths continue to rise to the top of the leadership class. ‘’Protecting kids” as a rationale is leading straight to suppression of rights & freedoms.
I see nothing as effective as parental involvement. Parents themselves are addicted to devices and this has created a loop where giving the distraction to their children provides some uninterrupted quiet to continue their own scrolling. Parents need to quit carrying cell phones to model sane behaviors. Most will provide several good excuses for not doing this. Ask any smoker why they don’t quit and they will do the same.
At the level of policy, we are in a bleak situation. It is hard to exaggerate how feckless and compromised western government structures have become. Not just enamored with technology and digital “governance’’ but completely dependent and corrupted by them.
We need a new type of political movement and nothing happens if you don't do it yourself. I have some ideas, but it will take some time for it to mature.
But you trust the government to build a national biometric database so your kid can download an app?
Australia just lit up the Harbour Bridge celebrating a law that forces adults to hand over face scans and government IDs to prove they're not teenagers. Every citizen. Logged, verified, handed to a third-party vendor so a regulator can confirm you're old enough to watch cat videos. People literally celebrated this.
That's the model you're pushing us toward.
Grindr backed this bill (app store accountability act). Pornhub too, by the way. The platforms supposedly at the center of the problem you're describing wrote checks to make sure this passes.
Sit with that for a second.
Because device manufacturers do compliance paperwork while Instagram's algorithm keeps running completely unchecked the second the app opens. "Parental approval" at download changes absolutely nothing about what gets served after. The harm continues. What's new is the surveillance infrastructure.
And nobody's saying the obvious part: YOU bought the device. The wifi runs through YOUR house, on YOUR account, because YOU pay for it monthly. Handing a 12-year-old an unrestricted smartphone was a choice. An active one. And now politicians are supposed to fix what happened after that choice?
A generation of parents found it easier to hand over a screen than enforce a boundary, and now they want the government to step in as mom and dad. Australia didn't solve that problem. They just built a surveillance state around it and threw a party.
How do you respond to the concerns that laws requiring age verification risk creating a system for identity control that can be abused beyond its original purpose? How do we prevent the tech oligarchs from gaining additional private data? (ID, biometric etc)
Also, how do we move on from here? Manipulative designs, algorithmic reinforcement of extreme contents, data collection for behavioral manipulation... these things harm us all and our cultural values and democracy. Not just the kids.
Must we not also demand regulation of the business model itself? Heavily regulate or even criminalize personalized algorithmic feeds that optimizes for time on the platform. Heavily regulate or even criminalize how data can be used for adds. Demand inter-operability between platforms to lessen lock-in effects.
Maybe instead of defining which platforms that are harmful, we could demand that all platforms beyond a certain size have to prove that their design des not systematically exploit psychological vulnerabilities. Just like medical drugs have to prove their safety before they reach the market.
Maybe we should also demand from our politicians the development transparent public service social media, that is designed to enable positive values and social interactions? Maybe stimulate local societies etc? We can't just be "anti-tech" we need to take public control of it and make some good use of it.
Prostitution is illegal, but there are still prostitutes.
Murder is illegal, but there is still murder.
Illegal drugs are illegal, but they are running rampant.
What keeps most of us from doing these illegal things is not the law, it is our own principles and self regard.
If all the above laws were rescinded, .what difference would it make? Would you run out and find yourself a prostitute, and then go shoot someone, and then abuse drugs?
There is an old saying, "You cannot legislate morality." And you can't.
Prostitution is much less common though in countries with Nordic model-style laws (like Sweden) compared to countries where buying sex is decriminalized (like Denmark) and even more so compared to where it's legalized (like Germany or Netherlands).
Murders were greatly reduced when it became criminalized by state law, compared to say the viking age with blood feuds etc. In Denmark many crimes went up when the nazi occupyers put the police officers in detention.
Norm formation and general deterrence (that is keeping the average joe from committing crimes) are considered the maybe most important arguments for having laws.
Of course laws are far from perfect instruments. And when it comes to drugs its very complicated, since people who are in pain or suffer from mental illness would be desperate for a remedy.
Also of course norm formation cannot rely to heavily on laws. It must also be organic culture. But think you're giving to little credit to what states and laws can positively accomplish. I guess that you live in the US where the state is hijacked by the oligarchs has not really provided much good for people so thats understandable. But the state has done a lot of good for people in some other democratic countries.
I think it's the chicken and the egg. Do laws cause people to change behavior, or do people change their behavior and then enact laws that reflect that changed behavior? We now have laws against slavery, but the laws were changed after enough people changed. Same for women's rights and so forth.
But as an American and a free thinker, I have one big issue with what you've said. You indicate that laws can change behavior, but by what right do governments force people to change their behavior? I do not accept that politicians and political movements know what's best for me. I not only don't accept it philosophically, present circumstance demonstrate that we have certifiable numskulls making the decisions in government.
It goes both ways, but I do think changes in norms typically drive changes in laws more than the opposite. So good point.
You also raise a fair point about incompetent rulers, and I agree with much of that as well. But I think your conclusion points in the wrong direction.
The question isn't whether governments should force you to change your behavior. The question is: who does govern your behavior right now? Because someone always does. Your employer can fire you at will. Your insurance company can deny your claim. A platform algorithm decides what information you see. These are all forms of power over your life that you never voted for and can't vote out.
The original American revolutionary insight wasn't "no one should govern us" it was "we should govern ourselves." Self-government doesn't mean submitting to politicians who think they know best but rather having a real say in the institutions that actually control our daily life.
When we only define freedom in the terms of liberalism, that is as "government, leave me alone," we don't end up free. We end up governed by whoever has the most money, the most market power, or the most lawyers. That is why I think that the classical republican concept of freedom as "non-domination" (rather than "non-interference") is the more potent one.
Classical republicanism has a rich tradition from Cicero to Machiavelli to Harrington. Some of it remained in the early Republican party and people like Lincoln. But Republicanism ideology was largely replaced by the liberalism of Hobbes, Locke etc. whose concept of "liberty" was compatible with slavery but not with government regulation of slave owners.
I'll perhpas muddy the water here. But it's not meant to refute your observations. The thirteen original colonies of the USA became completely autonomous states as a result of the revolutionary war. They created a federal government. Much like the EU today, this federal government was intended to oversee common interests of the states. It had essentially NO power within a state. That meant that citizens were more a citizen of an individual state than of the federal government. Remember, the USA was not a country, it was a federation of countries. Think about the name, "United States" There is no reference to a singular country in that name.
But things happen. Namely, two political parties that have reconfigured this federation in their own image. Now, we have fifty states, supposedly autonomous, but actually fully under the control of the two parties. Likewise, the federal government is under control of the two parties. In other words, the distinction between state governments and federal governments has been hopelessly blurred. This is inherently unconstitutional.
You mention Lincoln. We all know the good he did. But here's what else happened. For the first time since the USA was created, the federal government put itself in charge of who was or was not a citizen. It established qualifications for citizenship that had never before existed. Regardless of how well thought out it was, it took vast amounts of power and authority away from those previously autonomous states.
And the federal government has been seizing power ever since. If you pay attention, you can see the constitutional song and dance, in which federal and state laws contradict, and everyone pretends to not notice. State and federal marijuana laws are an amusing example of this.
As we discuss what sorts of laws are appropriate, remember that the two parties, which ultimately make all laws, have absolutely no authority to do so. And remember that it is the states that are supposed to control the federal government, not the other way around.
Yes, people still murder and rape despite those things being illegal. However, laws are more than just rules. They are a statement of intent on what a society deems to be acceptable and unacceptable. No, you cannot legislate people's morality, but you can certainly give them a shove in the right direction.
I get your point. But do you know what the speed limits is on any road? No, it's not what it says on the sign, it's 10mph more than what it says on the sign. That's how fast you can go before the law gets enforced.
We can't say n****r. Is there a law against it? No. So why can't we say it?
We put way too much stock in laws. When you think about, they have little effect on our behavior, either for bad or good.
One quibble on phrasing: I don’t do these laws as restricting kids’ access to social media as much as I see them (and the broader) issue as “restricting social media’s access to kids.”
This is beautiful work. The emperor has no clothes, indeed. I have the sense that more and more folk want to "call a spade and spade" and are sick of looking away from a problem that, while not able to be solved totally, can clearly be better than "status quo." Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Why stop at kids? The same arguments to protect kids apply to adults. I'm sure everyone reading this can immediately think of multiple adults they personally know who cannot handle social media. Should we expand it beyond just age?
Also why do some platforms get a pass while others are considered too dangerous. Why has Bluesky and Substack slid under the radar but not X?
If kids are banned off of places like Youtube or X, can I please get back my uncensored content from the late 90s to early 2000s? Glorious days to be a young boy on the internet. I don't need a gov't nanny, I was forged in the fires of the raw net. Will suck for these kids coming up.
If all social media required users to pay for content (eg.$1/hr or $50/month)and all digital data collection on human beings was banned then there would be no problem with social media addiction for any age group. We should be focusing on protecting humans from perverse incentives. The incentive for biometric ID systems which just make it easier to track and trace and surveil is a massive perverse incentive. Jon and co need to cast a wider net or risk leading civilization into the gutter of “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
Such a badass thing you are doing Jon.
Wish we had a million more of Jon…..especially Dads.
Amazing progress, thank you for all the hard work you have contributed to turn the tide.
Let’s get Chromebooks and Google Classroom out of public schools next!!
To think we can draw a line without addressing how this is also harming adults is naive.
No kidding. How do we expect to reduce social media consumption for kids when their parents refuse to leave their phones alone? Parents and other adults perpetuate media consumption. Kids are just following their lead.
I guess it can be seen as a strategical starting point. We need to start somewhere after all, and "everyone" cares about the children.
That being said, I'm not fully convinced either.
Remember - no government lets a crisis go to waste. This is already being used to further more profit by Big Tech with age verification and biometric data harvesting. If we think corporations care about our children, we are sorely mistaken.
The only organisation strong enough to deal with corporations is the state. I can't really see any other path than taking control over the state. That would be taking control over the corporations themselves, but communism is considered even more radical than democracy.
The perfect is the enemy of the good. Jon et al never said we could stop all the harms of social media this way. This is just a start; for parents to hear it's harming their kids is a start. And people here might know that, but I know lots of people who don't know this and don't know they are letting their kids be harmed.
I don’t think this author understands that none of this has anything to do with “protecting kids.”
Why are 10-year-olds running around with cell phones and email addresses?
Why are teenagers given debit cards?
These are parental choices, not under the direction or jurisdiction of the federal government.
But that gets to a deeper point.
How much *unaccountable* authority (because we know it always is) should the government have over *our children?* 🤔
Porn, it’s been there forever, just like bullies have. I could look at naked women all day long in the early 90s, but nobody was worried that it might become an existential crisis.
That was almost 35-years ago! But just now -- right now -- it’s an existential problem?
The same politicians who cry about porn on the Internet, and the need to "protect children" -- are the same people who are OK with Drag Queen Story Hour.
Come on, you’re being played.
Digital ID is right around the corner.
"How much *unaccountable* authority (because we know it always is) should the government have".
Thats your main problem there. Thats the thing you need to solve.
You can't go on trying to fight or avoid both the big corporations AND the government for all future. The problems won't go away. They will creep on closer on you.
You need to take control of the government. MAKE it accountable. That they only way. "Democracy" they used to call this ideal.
Well, without stopping demographic replacement, none of it matters -- because you end up with NYC. And the Muslim call to prayer in the morning.
Everything starts with realizing that what is proposed is *not* the true goal. THAT'S where it starts.
“The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.” - Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) circa 1960s
I don't follow. What's the "true goal" and who is in on it?
I see a censored future, like Great Britain, where tech monopolies and governments together abuse the people, while narcissistic psychopaths continue to rise to the top of the leadership class. ‘’Protecting kids” as a rationale is leading straight to suppression of rights & freedoms.
What policies do you recommend to genuinely protect the kids and restrict the power and reach of the tech monopolies?
I see nothing as effective as parental involvement. Parents themselves are addicted to devices and this has created a loop where giving the distraction to their children provides some uninterrupted quiet to continue their own scrolling. Parents need to quit carrying cell phones to model sane behaviors. Most will provide several good excuses for not doing this. Ask any smoker why they don’t quit and they will do the same.
At the level of policy, we are in a bleak situation. It is hard to exaggerate how feckless and compromised western government structures have become. Not just enamored with technology and digital “governance’’ but completely dependent and corrupted by them.
We need a new type of political movement and nothing happens if you don't do it yourself. I have some ideas, but it will take some time for it to mature.
Cute framing. "Parents can't trust tech."
But you trust the government to build a national biometric database so your kid can download an app?
Australia just lit up the Harbour Bridge celebrating a law that forces adults to hand over face scans and government IDs to prove they're not teenagers. Every citizen. Logged, verified, handed to a third-party vendor so a regulator can confirm you're old enough to watch cat videos. People literally celebrated this.
That's the model you're pushing us toward.
Grindr backed this bill (app store accountability act). Pornhub too, by the way. The platforms supposedly at the center of the problem you're describing wrote checks to make sure this passes.
Sit with that for a second.
Because device manufacturers do compliance paperwork while Instagram's algorithm keeps running completely unchecked the second the app opens. "Parental approval" at download changes absolutely nothing about what gets served after. The harm continues. What's new is the surveillance infrastructure.
And nobody's saying the obvious part: YOU bought the device. The wifi runs through YOUR house, on YOUR account, because YOU pay for it monthly. Handing a 12-year-old an unrestricted smartphone was a choice. An active one. And now politicians are supposed to fix what happened after that choice?
A generation of parents found it easier to hand over a screen than enforce a boundary, and now they want the government to step in as mom and dad. Australia didn't solve that problem. They just built a surveillance state around it and threw a party.
That's a canary in coal mine - NOT the blueprint.
How do you respond to the concerns that laws requiring age verification risk creating a system for identity control that can be abused beyond its original purpose? How do we prevent the tech oligarchs from gaining additional private data? (ID, biometric etc)
Also, how do we move on from here? Manipulative designs, algorithmic reinforcement of extreme contents, data collection for behavioral manipulation... these things harm us all and our cultural values and democracy. Not just the kids.
Must we not also demand regulation of the business model itself? Heavily regulate or even criminalize personalized algorithmic feeds that optimizes for time on the platform. Heavily regulate or even criminalize how data can be used for adds. Demand inter-operability between platforms to lessen lock-in effects.
Maybe instead of defining which platforms that are harmful, we could demand that all platforms beyond a certain size have to prove that their design des not systematically exploit psychological vulnerabilities. Just like medical drugs have to prove their safety before they reach the market.
Maybe we should also demand from our politicians the development transparent public service social media, that is designed to enable positive values and social interactions? Maybe stimulate local societies etc? We can't just be "anti-tech" we need to take public control of it and make some good use of it.
Prostitution is illegal, but there are still prostitutes.
Murder is illegal, but there is still murder.
Illegal drugs are illegal, but they are running rampant.
What keeps most of us from doing these illegal things is not the law, it is our own principles and self regard.
If all the above laws were rescinded, .what difference would it make? Would you run out and find yourself a prostitute, and then go shoot someone, and then abuse drugs?
There is an old saying, "You cannot legislate morality." And you can't.
Prostitution is much less common though in countries with Nordic model-style laws (like Sweden) compared to countries where buying sex is decriminalized (like Denmark) and even more so compared to where it's legalized (like Germany or Netherlands).
Murders were greatly reduced when it became criminalized by state law, compared to say the viking age with blood feuds etc. In Denmark many crimes went up when the nazi occupyers put the police officers in detention.
Norm formation and general deterrence (that is keeping the average joe from committing crimes) are considered the maybe most important arguments for having laws.
Of course laws are far from perfect instruments. And when it comes to drugs its very complicated, since people who are in pain or suffer from mental illness would be desperate for a remedy.
Also of course norm formation cannot rely to heavily on laws. It must also be organic culture. But think you're giving to little credit to what states and laws can positively accomplish. I guess that you live in the US where the state is hijacked by the oligarchs has not really provided much good for people so thats understandable. But the state has done a lot of good for people in some other democratic countries.
I think it's the chicken and the egg. Do laws cause people to change behavior, or do people change their behavior and then enact laws that reflect that changed behavior? We now have laws against slavery, but the laws were changed after enough people changed. Same for women's rights and so forth.
But as an American and a free thinker, I have one big issue with what you've said. You indicate that laws can change behavior, but by what right do governments force people to change their behavior? I do not accept that politicians and political movements know what's best for me. I not only don't accept it philosophically, present circumstance demonstrate that we have certifiable numskulls making the decisions in government.
It goes both ways, but I do think changes in norms typically drive changes in laws more than the opposite. So good point.
You also raise a fair point about incompetent rulers, and I agree with much of that as well. But I think your conclusion points in the wrong direction.
The question isn't whether governments should force you to change your behavior. The question is: who does govern your behavior right now? Because someone always does. Your employer can fire you at will. Your insurance company can deny your claim. A platform algorithm decides what information you see. These are all forms of power over your life that you never voted for and can't vote out.
The original American revolutionary insight wasn't "no one should govern us" it was "we should govern ourselves." Self-government doesn't mean submitting to politicians who think they know best but rather having a real say in the institutions that actually control our daily life.
When we only define freedom in the terms of liberalism, that is as "government, leave me alone," we don't end up free. We end up governed by whoever has the most money, the most market power, or the most lawyers. That is why I think that the classical republican concept of freedom as "non-domination" (rather than "non-interference") is the more potent one.
Classical republicanism has a rich tradition from Cicero to Machiavelli to Harrington. Some of it remained in the early Republican party and people like Lincoln. But Republicanism ideology was largely replaced by the liberalism of Hobbes, Locke etc. whose concept of "liberty" was compatible with slavery but not with government regulation of slave owners.
Good points.
I'll perhpas muddy the water here. But it's not meant to refute your observations. The thirteen original colonies of the USA became completely autonomous states as a result of the revolutionary war. They created a federal government. Much like the EU today, this federal government was intended to oversee common interests of the states. It had essentially NO power within a state. That meant that citizens were more a citizen of an individual state than of the federal government. Remember, the USA was not a country, it was a federation of countries. Think about the name, "United States" There is no reference to a singular country in that name.
But things happen. Namely, two political parties that have reconfigured this federation in their own image. Now, we have fifty states, supposedly autonomous, but actually fully under the control of the two parties. Likewise, the federal government is under control of the two parties. In other words, the distinction between state governments and federal governments has been hopelessly blurred. This is inherently unconstitutional.
You mention Lincoln. We all know the good he did. But here's what else happened. For the first time since the USA was created, the federal government put itself in charge of who was or was not a citizen. It established qualifications for citizenship that had never before existed. Regardless of how well thought out it was, it took vast amounts of power and authority away from those previously autonomous states.
And the federal government has been seizing power ever since. If you pay attention, you can see the constitutional song and dance, in which federal and state laws contradict, and everyone pretends to not notice. State and federal marijuana laws are an amusing example of this.
As we discuss what sorts of laws are appropriate, remember that the two parties, which ultimately make all laws, have absolutely no authority to do so. And remember that it is the states that are supposed to control the federal government, not the other way around.
Yes, people still murder and rape despite those things being illegal. However, laws are more than just rules. They are a statement of intent on what a society deems to be acceptable and unacceptable. No, you cannot legislate people's morality, but you can certainly give them a shove in the right direction.
I get your point. But do you know what the speed limits is on any road? No, it's not what it says on the sign, it's 10mph more than what it says on the sign. That's how fast you can go before the law gets enforced.
We can't say n****r. Is there a law against it? No. So why can't we say it?
We put way too much stock in laws. When you think about, they have little effect on our behavior, either for bad or good.
One quibble on phrasing: I don’t do these laws as restricting kids’ access to social media as much as I see them (and the broader) issue as “restricting social media’s access to kids.”
This is beautiful work. The emperor has no clothes, indeed. I have the sense that more and more folk want to "call a spade and spade" and are sick of looking away from a problem that, while not able to be solved totally, can clearly be better than "status quo." Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Why stop at kids? The same arguments to protect kids apply to adults. I'm sure everyone reading this can immediately think of multiple adults they personally know who cannot handle social media. Should we expand it beyond just age?
Also why do some platforms get a pass while others are considered too dangerous. Why has Bluesky and Substack slid under the radar but not X?
If kids are banned off of places like Youtube or X, can I please get back my uncensored content from the late 90s to early 2000s? Glorious days to be a young boy on the internet. I don't need a gov't nanny, I was forged in the fires of the raw net. Will suck for these kids coming up.
Thank you for your tireless work and for how clear, effective and constrictive you are as a leader of this international movement 🙏
Every Board of Education member should read The Anxious Generation and should require every teacher to do the same!
Thanks so much for repairing the world!!!!~!~
Great news for everyone! Now if only the US could do likewise…
If all social media required users to pay for content (eg.$1/hr or $50/month)and all digital data collection on human beings was banned then there would be no problem with social media addiction for any age group. We should be focusing on protecting humans from perverse incentives. The incentive for biometric ID systems which just make it easier to track and trace and surveil is a massive perverse incentive. Jon and co need to cast a wider net or risk leading civilization into the gutter of “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”