What seems most likely: The law won’t be rigidly enforced as teens and social media companies find ways to get around the ban, but the social norm established by the law and its strong popularity with politicians and voters will nonetheless lead to a significant decline in social media use by minors. Not every fourteen year old will draw a mustache on their photo or get a fake ID – and the law should be easier to enforce among younger people, which could mean that in five years or so it will be rare to find a fourteen or fifteen year old in Australia who has ever posted anything on social media.
This seems like a pretty good result, if you think, as I do, that social media is obviously bad for kids and adults alike. But that brings us back to the question I asked at the start of this column, which is of particular importance to Americans, who live in a country founded on the principle of free speech. The civil liberties argument against laws like the one Australia passed will likely prevail there, if only because it aligns, in this case, with powerful domestic tech companies. This argument is simple, but worth repeating: we should not impose arbitrary age limits on those who can express themselves in the digital public square, and we should not require that everyone who wishes to express their opinions online submit to an identity check. As a journalist, I am also aware that, for many people, social media is a source of information. It may be a toxic and extremely flawed alternative to traditional media, but I don’t think we should use government force to effectively redirect children to more traditional sources of information.
In my column on this topic two years ago, I compared the attempt to restrict social media use by adults to earlier efforts to do something similar with tobacco. The remarkably successful fight against youth smoking was based in part on changing social norms; it also depended on a series of legal restrictions and heavy taxation – and I didn’t see, at the time, what equivalent measures could be taken with social media. Ultimately, I thought it might just come down to the parents holding the line.
I’m less pessimistic now. One of the recurring themes that I address in “Time to Say Goodbye”, the podcast that I host with the the Atlantic Tyler Austin Harper, this is what a good life looks like today. When politicians, especially liberals, discuss the society they want to help bring about, what are the shared values that they believe will hold people together? I’m not talking about table issues, important as they are, or even tolerance and equality. What I have in mind is a vision of how Americans should live every day in an age where technology runs our lives. THE Times Columnist Ezra Klein recently wrote about this in an article on the “politics of attention” and the question of “human flourishing.” He concluded: “I don’t believe it will be possible for society to remain neutral on what it means to live our digital lives well. »
Ultimately, I agree with Klein that we will not remain neutral forever, even if our courts make an Australia-style ban almost impossible. But I have come to believe that, in the not-too-distant future, the concerns of civil liberties advocates like me will be put aside and a new set of social norms will emerge, particularly among the middle and upper classes. The signs of this quiet revolution in favor of children addicted to the Internet are already all around us. School districts across the country are banning phones in the classroom. “The Anxious Generation”, by Jonathan Haidt, which directly inspired the new law in Australia, took center stage. Times bestseller list for eighty-five weeks and has inspired small acts of technological rebellion from parents across the country.
The emerging anti-smartphone movement in America is resolutely non-partisan, for the most part, which contributes to its potential but also to the vagueness of its contours. It also took place almost entirely at the local and state level. More than thirty states across the country now have some form of cell phone ban in their schools, which is to be applauded. I think teenagers should have the right to post their opinions on social media, but I don’t think they need to do it in the middle of geometry class. If this means that First Amendment rights are further restricted in schools, that might be a compromise that free speech absolutists must accept.
