[dfxm12]

Passing a law is one thing, but what would be the specifics, how would they be enforced, what are the penalties and who pays them? It's relatively easy to say, ban sales of cigarettes to minors, limit advertising, punish people to give cigarettes to minors, etc.

It's hard for a province/country to ban an app/category of app for minors, no? Maybe it's relatively easy to ban the app/website outright in your jurisdiction's borders, but that should be the last resort, if it is to be considered at all, since it is a huge blow to freedom on the web and really doesn't solve much since any manner of app can be just as dangerous.

[josho]

It’s clear to me that we need laws restricting what’s allowed. We now have evidence that the apps are addictive. We have precedence restricting addictions (alcohol/gambling). It should then be possible to restrict companies from creating algorithms intended to addict. Of course it’s easy to say that at a high level. The written law will be much more challenging to draft.

[dfxm12]

We have precedence in restricting sales of certain substances to minors. A physical hand off has to take place in a physical place where a government issued ID can be checked for age verification. If you get caught breaking this law, you can lose your license to sell these things (and likely go bankrupt cause these things make a ton of money), because the government controls that, too.

This is in no way the same thing as policing "creating algorithms". We don't/can't go after Labatt for "creating beer" (it was tried...). I agree, writing laws is challenging, but even professional law makers can't get it right, not in the sense that they aren't skillful enough to get it right, but in the sense that it is not possible. We're seeing this with Porn Hub in certain US states. Local laws are just not effective in enforcing a multinational Internet service. To get back to the original point, this is why you might want to try something other than "having the government pass laws about restricting social media for youth under a certain age".

[josho]

Beer perhaps is a poor analogy because it’s been around forever. A better analogy are drugs. We have approval process for drugs to safeguard against harm and addictions.

I believe that social media could be transformatively positive for society. But companies aren’t pursuing that, they are pursuing engagement in search of profit. We now know that engagement has significant harm in society.

It’s time to do ‘something’ and we need to start having conversations on what that something is, so we don’t just do the obvious and force everyone to submit a government id for access.

[dfxm12]

It’s time to do ‘something’

Well, like it says on the top of this web page, the Ontario school board is suing social media giants. You seem passionate about this, as do they, so it sounds like you might be interested to start a conversation with them.