| > These laws exist because social media is extremely damaging to children There actually isn't much evidence of this. Most of the thrust for this hypothesis comes from The Anxious Generation, which was written by a moral psychologist as opposed to an adolescent researcher, and has been widely criticized by experts. https://kidsplaytech.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Panic_Fi... There is evidence that social media use is associated with poor mental health but the causation piece is contested. Most stories about social media harm are kids who were already struggling. > Can anyone suggest a better way of protecting kids, other than age verification? As far as protection from social media, the best solutions I've seen are: - Antitrust and interoperability: people want social media, just not the toxicity. Give them a way to migrate to better platforms. CA tried this with the Digital Choice Act (AB 2169) but it got shot down by Big Tech lobbyists. - Education: Teach kids how to be responsible with social media. There's a CA bill authored in cooperation with high schoolers doing exactly this: https://edsource.org/2026/social-media-ai-mental-health/7559... - Privacy protection: rather that detect who's a child and protect only them from being tracked and surveilled, protect everyone. IMO social media is a red herring. There are much more obvious sources of youth distress with far stronger effects in the data: poverty and economic hardship, abuse in the home, parental mental illness, drug abuse, marginalized demographics (e.g. LGBTQ+ youth have way higher suicide rates). The kids would be way better served by things like universal healthcare, universal childcare, a better foster care system, etc. |