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United States law that would require all operating systems to implement mandatory age verification is now available to read.
The bill is ironically titled the Parents Decide Act rather than the Government Decides Act. It applies to all operating systems; Windows, Linux, embedded systems, even smart refrigerators. Developers will have full access to all relevant personal data.
The bill doesn't even specify how age verification will work and instead delegates this task to the FTC, which will also specify data storage/protection requirements. The law wiould be considered in effect one year from date it is enacted and violations will be handled under the Federal Trade Commission Act.
„Child protection“ laws like this have no good justification and simply amount to destroying anonymity on the internet. What benefit does anybody get from such a law anyway? I can't see any. If operating systems are so bad for 17 year olds, why don't parents just take their kids' phones away? How does 17 year olds using operating systems create negative externalities for other people? I'm not seeing what I'm supposed to be gaining from these laws. It seems like lazy parents have teamed up with law enforcement who hate anonymous internet usage to demand that governments destroy internet privacy under the thin veneer of protecting teenagers from nothing.
I think the idea is that
The operating system would keep track of users' ages;
This would facilitate porn sites keeping minors out; and
It would also facilitate social media bans for people under whatever age is deemed appropriate.
Anyway, I think there are two answers to your question.
The first is that phones serve various positive purposes, such as being able to call the authorities in an emergency; being able to use the map function to avoid getting lost; and so on. Age verification (if it worked) would allow young people to retain phones for these positive purposes while locking them out of porn sites, etc.
The other issue is that with respect to social media, online games, and so forth, there is kind of a collective action problem. It's difficult to tell your children they can't use some popular social media site if all their friends at school are using it. Even if most of the parents would prefer to keep their kids off of social media, few parents want to be the first one to do it. A blanket rule, for example, that nobody under 16 can use Facebook, would solve this collective action problem.
Anyway, I agree that there is a huge potential cost to age verification, which is that it will undermine anonymity. As someone who has politically unpopular views, that doesn't thrill me.
This narrative is about as compelling to me as there being a deep state conspiracy to destroy privacy. A better narrative is that individual parents feel they would be individually better off if they took their individual kids' phone away, but they feel too weak to do that. So they want the government to discipline their kids for them. Normal people can't identify collective action problems well, it's too complex of a scenario. A well documented collective action problem is credentialism, and people can't grasp it because they just see that they would be better off personally if they consumed more education. Since collective action problems are complex, they also require solid documentation to prove. Bryan Caplan produced this for credentialism, but the data on teenage phone usage doesn't prove a collective action problem. It argues, poorly, that teenagers are individually better off when their individual social media usage is reduced. So the question of „why not parent“ must be answered individualistically. My guess is that individual parents feel weaker than in the past.
I disagree with this. Maybe normal people are unfamiliar with game theory; the prisoner's dilemma; nash equilibria; and so on. But definitely a lot of the time they can intuitively sense that there are situations where it would be good if everyone would agree to some X, but in the absence of an agreement, they feel pressured to go along with the crowd.
I disagree with this as well. Sometimes collective action problems are relatively straightforward and sometimes common sense is more than sufficient to recognize that one exists.
I'm not familiar with any formal research, however I'm pretty confident just based on general observations and common sense. Above, you asked why parents don't simply take their children's phones away. I am quite confident that -- part of -- the answer to this question is that parents don't want their children to be the weirdo in class who doesn't have a phone; who's out of the loop; etc.
Common sense in this case is a hammer you got from slate star codex, for which everything is a nail. My common sense says the hammer is a specialty one and it doesn't fit all but a few nails. Alas, rationalists are always trying to use it anyway. Collective action this, game theory that, moloch thing there, prisoner's dilemma here.
I don't think parents implementing common sense social media controls to their under-16 children would make them the weird kid in class. It would not amount to completely depriving them of a phone or the ability to text friends.
Except they fail to do this in the most important cases. Probably because their heuristic is asking whether the thing is individually good. They don't think teen phone usage is individually good, the mainstream argument is not collective action problem, it is individual parenting problem.
For what it may be worth, I was studying game theory when Scott was still in diapers.
You are sort of shifting the goalposts here. Earlier, you referred to completely taking away a child's phone:
But anyway, let's break this down.
Do you agree that many parents perceive that their children's use of social media is harmful?
Do you agree that of those parents, many also perceive that their children are likely to end up being isolated/left out/etc. if their child stops using social media while their children's peers continue to do so?
Well do you think there are ANY situations where normal people can intuitively and correctly sense that there is a collective action problem, even if they are unable to make use of the formal language and terminology?
The collective action problem is other parents. And of course, other kids.
You can't control what happens in other people's houses when your kid goes over to a friend's house. Maybe the parents are lax, maybe they don't care if their 12 year old kid is watching porn, maybe they have no idea. Boys are going to dare one another over "did you see this?"
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No, I think they lack the cognitive capacity for anything beyond „X is bad, because if it happens to me, I won't like it“ and „Y is good, because if it happens to me, I will like it“. That's the basis for all of our laws and our education system and economic system. The masses have failed to accept every well-documented collective action problem I can think of. It's because they require someone to be top 10% literacy to comprehend.
For example, this comment. He argues
But the evidence follows the individual heuristic I just wrote:
„I feel bad after too much time online, so I would be better with less time online. I sleep too little because of phone, so I would be better off putting phone away early. I feel bad on the internet, so I would like the internet to go away.“ And seriously, the last one is preposterous, can you imagine the collective economic damage if there was no internet? Meanwhile, when it comes to actual collective action, I have data that says only 16% agree that a total phone ban at school is a good idea, and only 30% agree that any phone restrictions at all are a good idea. They don't want collective action.
Yes.
No, because I think a solid fix is a screen time limit, and this doesn't lead to complete isolation. I think parents don't do this because they are lazy and weak and won't fight with their teens.
I meant partially, or on a temporary basis for a particular reason.
I disagree. For example, I'm pretty sure most people favor laws against income tax evasion. Even though most people would cheat on their taxes if they could get away with it.
Do you dispute that most people favor laws against income tax evasion?
Ok, and is so preposterous to hypothesize that people might have the following feelings: (1) I feel bad when I am away from social media because I feel left out; and (2) I feel bad when I use social media because I feel inadequate compared to a lot of my connections.
Umm, does that mean "yes" or "no"? I am not asking about screen time limits. I am asking this:
It's a very simple yes or no question.
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