Legislate what, specifically? I always see calls for more legislation around social media, but I rarely see any actionable suggestions.
Frankly, I’m kind of shocked at the degree that tech communities are rushing for legislation on this topic. When I was growing up I remember the big issue being violence in video games. Politicians went on crusades to demonize video games and demand that we pass legislation to protect the kids from any exposure to violent video games, lest the video games turn them into school shooters.
With video games, the online tech communities rallied against any legislation and wrote volumes about how kids were smart enough to manage themselves and not let violent video games influence their thinking. With social media, tech communities are doing the opposite: Writing volumes about how kids are incapable of managing themselves and will succumb to social media destroying their mental health.
The major difference between the two is that tech people (on average) like video games but they don’t like social media. So video games get a pass, but social media must be attacked with everything we’ve got. The secondary subtext buried in most of these articles is that young girls, specifically, are most vulnerable to social media issues, whereas violent video games were largely an issue for young boys. Apparently we’re okay letting young boys handle difficult content but we don’t give the same credit to young girls. The more I watch all of this play out, the more hypocritical it all feels.
I also suspect that if anti-social-media politicians see success that we’ll see a revival of the anti-violent-game politicians. After all, we need to regulate what the kids consume, right?