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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.
The teenagers themselves agree. 68% of them feel worse after spending time online. 50% say a digital curfew would improve their lives, 47% would prefer to live in a world where the internet doesn't exist.
And, pertinent to what we're talking about:
How much data do we need to show that teenagers are stuck in a collective action problem when supermajorities of them are saying 'please help us get out of this collective action problem'?
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. Tracks well with my experience in school.
Caused by doom scrolling and algo slop. Fix social media, don't target adult privacy rights and teenagers' access to phones.
Sleep related. Best solution is to delay school start times and encourage parents to give teenagers a bedtime, not this spyware bill.
Not a majority, too abstract a question, just a vibe, also too bad, this bill doesn't make the internet disappear (which would be a disaster), it just attacks internet privacy.
You'd need a book like The Case Against Education. Except, The Anxious Generation was slop and didn't even include most of the data Haidt used on Substack to make the case. He actually dumbed it down for normies. Apparently normies need a fallacious book to accept that there is a problem, but a non-fallacious one can't be produced. Hm.
I would distinguish between school discipline matters and social matters. Clearly, young people aren't happy with the digital first childhood, but all kids like messing around in school. The two positions aren't really in conflict. Although frankly, the idea that we should be consulting children on the kind of discipline they are subject to seems pretty stupid. I imagine a lot of kids would like to be able to bring alcohol into school too.
I mean, I'm 100% behind banning stuff like infinite scroll, but it's not like there's a big button governments can press that says 'make the digital world not addictive'. I mean, really think about what that would entail. You'd have to ban video games, youtube, dating apps, Reddit and a bunch of other stuff I haven't thought of. There's an awful lot of stuff on the internet that is (or can be) addictive. I've dumbed down my phone about as much as possible and I still find myself idly scrolling on the Wikipedia app. Addictiveness is just a characteristic of the digital world. Banning it all for everyone would be far more authoritarian than just preventing teenagers from using the worst offending apps.
Delaying school start times isn't a bad idea, but we had early school start times before and we didn't have kids demanding restrictions on themselves. This is different. Also, bedtimes, really? Do you honestly think that parents haven't thought of 'tell your children to go to bed'? The kids themselves recognise the problem isn't 'lack of bedtimes', it's the addiction machine sitting on the bedside table.
The very fact that such a high number would want to delete a technology that is so integrated into their lives should give you pause for thought. Teenagers in the 1920s didn't want to ban the radio, kids in the 50s didn't wish they lived in a world without television. The internet has clearly damaged the social fabric in a meaningful way, and the fact that young people have noticed too deserves more than a flippant response.
I've read both of these books but I really don't understand what point you're trying to make here. Could you clarify?
Maybe less stupid than consulting the rabble on the kind of laws they are subject to, considering they destroy civilization when they choose wrong, but kids in school just have a little more fun, since school is pointless anyway.
Governments could ban infinite scroll, start at a fine of $10 million per day of any company commanded to remove infinite scroll. I bet it will be gone quickly.
No, you don't have to be any more consistent than your take on schools and democracy. The government is a murderous asshole that goes on random violent rampages over small triggers, it is not a Kantian philosopher attempting to achieve a perfectly Consistent moral Order of Things.
Either-or fallacy. Ponder heroin and cigarettes, if you will.
Maybe it wouldn't replicate.
You don't know that.
How? What's confusing you?
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Do you not remember being 12/14 and arguing passionately that you were now old enough to be allowed stay up late(r)? Maybe you can force 15 year old Teen Kid to go to their bedroom, but you can't force them to go to sleep (and you can't lock them in, either).
Apparently 50% of them now want a bedtime, so why would this be an issue for them?
But you can take their phone for the night, which is what I presume digital curfew means. Or use some kind of parental control so that it locks down.
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