I’m asking for public policy ideas here. A lot of countries are enacting age verification now. But of course this is a privacy nightmare and is ripe for abuse. At the same time though, I also understand why people are concerned with how kids are using social media. These products are designed to be addictive and are known to cause body image issues and so forth. So what’s the middle ground? How can we protect kids from the harms of social media in a way that respects everyone’s privacy?
There is no “harms of social media” per se. There are harms of unregulated companies that purposefully create addiction machines that are harmful to everyone, young and old alike. Our collective grandma became an antivaxer at the ripe age of 71, our collective dad became racist not at 13 either.