What seems most likely: The law will not be strictly enforced as teenagers and social media companies find ways to circumvent the ban, but the social norm established by the law and its high popularity among politicians and voters will nonetheless lead to a significant decline in social media use by minors. Not every fourteen-year-old is going to draw a mustache on their photo or get a fake ID – and the law should be easier to enforce among younger children, which could mean that in five or so years 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, like me, believe that social media is clearly harmful to both children and adults. But this brings us back to the question I asked at the beginning of this article, which has special significance for Americans living in a country founded on the principle of free speech. The civil libertarian argument against laws like Australia's is likely to win in this country, if only because it involves powerful domestic tech companies. The argument is simple, but it bears repeating: We shouldn't set arbitrary age limits on who can express themselves in the digital town square, and we shouldn't require everyone who wants to express their opinions online to undergo identity verification. As a journalist, I also recognize that social media is a source of news for many people. It may be a toxic and woefully flawed alternative to legacy 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 limit social media use to adults only with earlier efforts to do something similar with tobacco. The surprisingly successful fight against smoking among young people has depended in part on changing social norms; it was also subject to many legal restrictions and high taxes – and at the time I did not understand what equivalent measures could be taken regarding social networks. In the end, I thought it might come down to the parents holding the line.
Now I'm less pessimistic. One of the recurring topics I discuss on the Time to Say Goodbye podcast I co-host Atlantic Tyler Austin Harper – This is what a good life looks like today. When politicians, especially liberal ones, discuss the society they want to help realize, what common values do they think will unite people? I'm not talking about kitchen table issues, important as they are, or even tolerance and equality. I mean a vision of how Americans should live every day at a time when our lives are controlled by technology. Time columnist Ezra Klein recently talked about this in piece about the “politics of attention” and the question of “human flourishing.” He concluded: “I don’t believe society can remain neutral about what it means to live a good digital life.”
Ultimately, I agree with Klein that we won't be neutral forever, even if our courts make a ban like Australia's nearly impossible. But I have come to believe that in the not-too-distant future, the concerns of ardent civil rights activists like myself will be pushed aside and a new set of social norms will emerge, especially in the middle and upper classes. Signs of this quiet revolution, unleashed on behalf of children addicted to the Internet, are already all around us. School districts across the country are banning the use of phones in the classroom. “An anxious generation,” To Jonathan Haidtwhich directly influenced the new law in Australia was on Time bestseller list for eighty-five weeks and inspired small tech revolts among parents across the country.
nascent anti-smartphones The movement in America is for the most part decidedly non-partisan, and this contributes to its potential as well as the vagueness of its contours. This also happened almost entirely at the local and state level. More than thirty states across the country now have some form of cell phone ban in schools, and this should be welcomed. I think teenagers should have the right to post their opinions on social media, but I don't think they should do it in the middle of geometry class. If this means that First Amendment rights are further curtailed in schools, that may be a compromise that free speech absolutists will have to accept.
