Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

When I was first getting online, the expectation was that you at least had to be bright enough to lie about your age. Now I have to occasionally prune my timeline after it fills up with "literally a minor." Even an annoyance tax might have some positive effect. Scare the pastel death-threats back into their hole...

I only changed 2 words for 1.

To me, the only way out of this is by changing one nightmare for another giving the gov't the decision of allowing/denying access. Human nature is not a simple thing to regulate since the desire for that regulating is part of human nature

People said the same thing about age restrictions for smoking, alcohol, movies, and on and on and on.

It's not some unsolvable new problem just because it's the ad-tech industry.

The goal of this is to bring attention to the fact that it's a problem and should be seen as undesirable, like pornography or Joe Camel. The cancellation of Joe didn't prevent kids from getting cigarettes but it did draw attention to the situation and there has been a marked decline in youth smoking since the late 90s when the mascot was removed. It's correlative, for sure, but the outcomes are undeniable. The same happened with the DARE program and class 1 drugs (except for marijuana iirc).

Even just making illegal the promotion of social media toward children would have a huge effect.

Not at all. Just the social media sites, which are objectively bad for kids. As an adult, you do what you want on the internet.

A better solution is more robust device management, with control given to the device owner (read: the parent). The missing legislative piece is mandating that social media companies need to respond differently when the user agent tells them what to send.

I should be able to take my daughter's phone (which I own), set an option somewhere that indicates "this user is a minor," and with every HTTP request it makes it sets e.g. an OMIT_ADULT_CONTENT header. Site owners simply respond differently when they see this.

That seems intuitive, but it's not actually true. I suggest looking up zero-knowledge proofs.

Using modern cryptography, it is easy to send a machine-generated proof to your social media provider that your government-provided ID says your age is ≥ 16, without revealing anything else about you to the service provider (not even your age), and without having to communicate with the government either.

The government doesn't learn which web sites you visit, and the web sites don't learn anything about you other than you are certified to be age ≥ 16. The proofs are unique to each site, so web sites can't use them to collude with each other.

That kind of "smart ID" doesn't have to be with the government, although that's often a natural starting point for ID information. There are methods which do the same based on a consensus of people and entities that know you, for example. That might be better from a human rights perspective, given how many people do not have citizenship rights.

> (and probably unconstitutional under the First Amendment, to boot.)

If it would be unconstitutional to require identity-revealing or age-revealing ID checks for social media, that's all the more reason to investigate modern technical solutions we have to those problems.

Aren't the really problematic social networks the ones where you've lost your privacy and anonymity long ago and are being tracked and mined like crazy?

We ARE talking about social media.

Like, the least private software on the planet.

But with the topic at hand being social media, I think a lot of the same issues and solutions apply. It's harmful to allow kids to interact with anyone and everyone at any given time. Boundaries are healthy.

Aaaaand, finally there's much less destruction of human livelihood by guns than both of the aforementioned topics if we measure "destruction" by "living a significantly impoverished life from the standard of emotional and mental wellbeing". I doubt we could even get hard numbers on the number of marriages destroyed by pornography, which yield broken households, which yield countless emotional and mental problems.

So, no, guns aren't something we should discuss first. Also, guns have utility including but not limited to defending yourself and your family. Porn has absolutely zero utility, and social media is pretty damn close, but not zero utility.

The First Amendment guarantees free expression, not anonymous expression.

For example, there are federal requirements for identification for political messages. [1] These requirements do not violate the First Amendment.

[1] https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/advertisi...

Not necessarily, consider the counterexample of devices with parental-controls which--when locked--will always send a "this person is a minor" header. (Or "this person hits the following jurisdictional age-categories", or some blend of enough detail to be internationally useful and little-enough to be reasonably private and not-insane to obey.)

That would mostly puts control into the hands of parents, at the expense of sites needing some kind of code-library that can spit out a "block or not" result.

Probably not. Minors have all sorts of restrictions on rights, including first amendment restrictions such as in schools.

"(And if it is, let's start talking about gun ownership first...)"

Are you advocating for removing ID checks for this? If not, it seems that this point actually works against your argument.

Not saying that I agree with a ban, but your arguments against it don't really stand.

Since about half a year I've noticed the German Twitter section getting sunk in hate posts, people disrespecting each other, ranting about politicians or ways of thinking, but being really hateful. It's horrible. I've adblocked the "Trending" section away, because its the door to this horrible place where people don't have anything good to share anymore but disrespect and hate.

This made me think about what we're really in need for, at least here in Germany, is a Twitter alternative, where people register by using their eID and can only post by using their real name. Have something mean to say? Say it, but attach your name to it.

This anonymity in social media is really harming German society, at least as soon as politics are involved.

I don't know exactly how it is in the US but apparently it isn't as bad as here, at least judging from the trending topics in the US and skimming through the posts.

COPPA has entered the building. If you're under 13 and a platform finds out, they'll usually ban you until you prove that you're not under 13 (via ID) or can provide signed forms from your parent / legal guardian.

I've seen dozens of people if not more over the years banned from various platforms over this. We're talking Reddit, Facebook, Discord and so on.

I get what you're saying, but it kind of is a thing already, all one has to do is raise the age limit from 13 to say... 16 and voila.

Ban portable electronics for children. Demand that law enforcement intervene any time it's spotted in the wild. If you still insist that children be allowed phones, dumb flip phones for them.

It could be done if there was the will to do it, it just won't be done.

Social media is on the internet. It is not the internet.

Technically you can make that work without issues (You only need to prove your age not your identity, something which can reasonably be archived without leaking your identity).

There are just two practical issues:

- companies, government and state (at least US police & spy agencies) will try to undermine any afford to create a reasonable anonymous

- it only technically works if a "reasonable degree" of proof is "good enough", i.e. it's must be fine that a hacker can create a (illegal?) tool with which a child could pretend to be 16+, e.g. by proxing the age check to a hacked device of an adult. Heck it should be fine if a check can be tricked by using the parents passport or phone. I mean it's an 16+ check, there really isn't much of a reason why it isn't okay to have a system which is only "good enough". But lawmakers will try nonsense.

Interestingly this is more a problem for the US then some other states AFIK due to how 1) you can't expect everyone 18+ to have an id and everyone 16+ to be able to easily get one (a bunch of countries have owing (not carrying) id requirements without it being a privacy issue. 2) Terrible consumer protection making it practically nearly impossible to create a privacy preserving system even if government and state agencies do not meddle.

Similar if there wouldn't be the issue with passports in US it probably wouldn't touch the First Amendment as it in the end protects less then a lot of people believe it does.

The bulk of the internet has not been anonymous for a while. Facebook requires an id already, Google tracks you using Google and the OS, reddit is tightening to control bots, amazon requires a phone number.

Think about it. What portion of your activities day to day on the Internet are anonymous? Now try to do them anonymously. It isn't practical/possible anymore and the internet of yesteryear is gone.

Surely not.

Imagine: government sells proof of age cards. They contain your name, and a unique identifier.

Each time you sign up to a service, you enter your name and ID. The service can verify with the government that your age is what it needs to be for the service. There are laws that state that you can't store that ID or use it for any other purpose.

Doesn't seem impossible.

I do. Anything to avoid "the talk", tbh. I grew up Catholic. I never had "the talk". I don't even know where to start. Blow jobs?

Anonymity services can still exist without fostering an environment to addict children and young adults to social media or a device... and without your precious "rights" being taken away.

No, it isn't. Check out Yivi [1]. Its fundamental premise is to not reveal your attributes. It's based on academic work into (a.o.) attribute-based encryption. The professor then took this a step further and spun off a (no profit) foundation to expand and govern this idea.

[1] https://privacybydesign.foundation/irma-explanation/

Depends on the argument being made, on the ideology of the audience, on the current norms, etc.

I had an exchange here on HN some time back (topic was about schools removing certain books from their libraries), and very many people in support of those books, which dealt with gender-identity and sexual orientation, also supported outright porn (the example I used was pornhub) for kids of all ages as long as those books with pictures (not photos) of male-male sexual intercourse could stay in the library.

Right now, if you made the argument "There are some things kids below $AGE shouldn't be exposed to", you'll still get some (vocal) minority disagreeing because:

1. They feel that what $AGE kids get exposed to should be out of the parent's hands ("Should we allow parents to hide evolution from their children?", "Should we allow parents to hide transgenderism from their children?")

2. They know that, especially with young children, they will lose their chance to imprint a norm on the child if they are prevented from distributing specific material to young children.

In the case of sex and sexual education, there is currently a huge push for specific thoughts to be normalised, and unfortunately if it means that graphic sexual depictions are made to children, so be it.

The majority is rarely so vocal about things they consider "common sense", like no access to pornhub for 10 year olds.

Hopefully this will reduce amount of people using social media.

This is so incorrect it makes the flat earth theory look good.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jul/31/margaret-pomera...

It happened to me and millions of others.

Why don’t you take it away from yourself? Just delete your account.

My kid, and I have told my wife this, is ready to view whatever he wants on the internet when he can circumvent me.

Do you think simply labelling it as bad is sufficient? Parents have no idea.

Every generation has this freakout about something or another. I expect modern kids will end up better at handling social media than their parents are.

How would you write a law that accomplishes your goal?

I would've backed your argument up until a few years ago, but the science is coming down pretty hard now showing that social media use is absolutely detrimental to still-developing minds.

The fact that are well over a dozen exceptions carved out strongly suggests that the definition is anything but narrowly tailored, and the authors of the bill preferred to add in exceptions to everyone who objected rather than rethinking their broad definitions.

1a-c will be trivially satisfied by anything that "has user accounts" and "allow users to comment". 1e is clearly meant to cover "algorithmic" recommendations, but it's worded so broadly that a feature that includes "threads you've commented on" would satisfy this prong. 1d is problematic; it can be interpreted so narrowly that nothing applies, or so broadly that everything applies. IANAL, but I think you'd have a decent shot of going after this for unconstitutionally vague on this prong for sure.

Discounting 1d, this means that virtually every website in existence qualifies as social media sites, at least before you start applying exceptions. Not just Facebook or Twitter, but things like Twitch, Discord, Paradox web forums, Usenet, an MMO game, even news sites and Wikipedia are going to qualify as social media platforms.

Actually, given that it's not covered by any of the exceptions, Wikipedia is a social media platform according to Florida, and I guess would therefore be illegal for kids to use. Even more hilariously, Blackboard (the software I had to use in school for all the online stuff at school) qualifies as a social media platform that would be illegal for kids to use.

> f. Interactive gaming, virtual gaming, or an online service

This bill is already out of date. The new generation's social media are games like Roblox. And these are as addictive as the old social media.

Good luck with this whack-a-mole. A comprehensive bill would stop this at the source: kids owning smartphones. But addressing smarphones would upset too many parents and too much business, so it won't get done.

1d does stand out. I can guess what they were going for. I wonder if it could be somehow scoped to gamified, or to feed-based algorithmic sites. As a random example, Reddit's site definitely underwent such feed based boosting in the last few years. I'm constantly getting suggested content that is some form of region-based outrage event, Person X doing horrible thing to person Y, etc, and its nauseating. You click one such thing and it knows and it just hits you again and again, and eventually you just have to get out. Which sucks because every time I pick up a new interest, its an easy place to go to find more people that are into it; but you can't get that without the BS.

> Utilizes addictive, harmful, or deceptive design features, or any other feature that is designed to cause an account holder to have an excessive or compulsive need to use or engage with the social media platform.

Many platforms can argue that they're not engaging in this behavior. Do Mastodon and Lemmy count as addicting? They look like Twitter and Reddit on the surface, but they don't have a sorting algorithm that maximizes for engagement. So would they be included in the definition or not?

And if they don't, what's stopping big companies from claiming the same, since you can't actually see their source code for news feed sorting?

"I'm not being mean, it's the law."

Um, it's simple maths. Guessing you're meaning something else though?

Unfortunately, as a society, we have a much harder time grasping social media threat data. I suppose some of that is due to how news orgs consistently+bizarrely+hugely overstating the actual harms in the data.

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/01/08/leading-save-the-kids-ad...

Then there'd be even more unintended consequence. Instead of sites you don't want kids creating accounts on you'd have sites selling 5 minutes of ads to create an account for them or increasingly shady stuff. Preventing this kind of site is the same as the original issue.

Google Workspace accounts, especially those for education[0], have Web & App Activity, as well as Location History, automatically turned off. It's just a tool for schools to get free/cheap email, storage, and classroom tools. For your child under 13 to be able to use it compliant with COPPA[1], your school must have either used some level of blanket consent, or the school didn't bother to actually get the parental consent Google requires.

0: https://edu.google.com/intl/ALL_us/workspace-for-education/e...

1: https://cloud.google.com/security/compliance/coppa

This is coming from the state that is trying to ban books based on some backwards concern of a white kid feeling bad. (for the record I am white).

I don't care what side of politics you are on... you know what opposition I am talking about. Whether you are for or against it.

> not people concerned with it have an agenda to expose kids to "viewpoints" that their parents would disapprove of.

Yes! Because otherwise the parents are brainwashing their kids into their viewpoint not allowing them to see the real world.

This isn't a hard concept to understand here.

I mean I am liberal and atheist. But even I have wondered if I ever have kids if I don't expose them to the choice of religion if that is brainwashing of its own. I may try to justify it with the harm that religion has caused, but I am still denying my kid another prospective that is different than my own.

Edit:

To clarify here. If this was a state that was not actively removing opposing viewpoints from their libraries and teachings than I may buy that they actually care about their kids. But it's not, it's Florida. The beacon of being scared of their kids knowing anything about the real world and daring to have compassion for someone different than them.

Well, true, TikTok probably has more negatives than positives, but I have a feeling the American Talibans[1] in power don't like teens organizing, and where do they organize? On social media...

[1] Yes this is an apt comparison. Suppression of opposing viewpoints, growing voter suppression and not even accepting results of democratic elections, and then the whole anti-Abortion movement.

The idea is that social media exposes kids to viewpoints that they wouldn't otherwise be exposed to, so parents who want their kids to be a certain way would not want this, as they cannot easily control what viewpoints their kids are exposed to online.

Of course, every parent wants their kid to be a certain way, whether or not this is negative is dependent on how narrow that certain way is. The same applies to restricting what kids are exposed to: it is good to restrict exposure to some things, but too much restriction becomes bad.

The Florida legislature has recently been restricting the education system's ability to talk about gender and race, and pushing for more Christianity in schools. This makes some people feel there is an implied extension to the apparent "This is to protect kids" message: This is to protect kids (by making them conservative and Christian)

But in its purest form Social media isn't a bad thing and is a good way to actually keep in contact with friends. Also a good way to keep up on events happening around the world without relying on the news for everything.

Small Federal Government, more local government control. Let local communities decide for themselves what is important. Now I know your first thought is to ignore what I'm saying to find examples that prove this wrong. But this is the conservative approach in general.

NY and CA are never going to pass a bill like this, if having your kids on TikTok is important, move somewhere where you are with like minded people.

That would indeed allow the site to compile a database of government issues IDs and give that information (willfully or via leaks) to third parties.

Those issues can be fixed by using a three party system. The parties are the user, the site that they need to prove their age to, and a site that already has the information from the user's government ID.

Briefly, the user gets a token from the social media site, presents that token and their government ID to the site that already has their ID information, and that site sign that token if the user meets the age requirements. The user presents that signed token back to the social network which sees that it was signed by the third site which tells it the third site says the user meeds the age requirement.

By using modern cryptographic techniques (blind signatures or zero knowledge proofs) the communication between the user and the third site can be done in a way that keeps the third site from getting any information about which site they are doing the age check for.

With some additional safeguards in the protocol and in what sites are allowed to be the ID checking sites it can even be made so that someone who gets records of both the social media site and the third site can't use timing information to match up social media accounts with verifications and so could work with sites that allow anonymous accounts.

For one, ease up on the hyperbole if you want to be taken seriously. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt because the news is nothing but hyperbole these days, so it's easy to pick up the habit. Second, most kids aren't having "their youth, innocence and brains destroyed." The news takes the edge cases, amplifies them and presents it as the norm to peddle fear because fear sells. Nothing ever is bad as the news makes it out to be, but they gotta make a dollar, you see how bad the news business is since the internet?

FWIW, my kid uses social media and just connects with her friends. Nothing overly malicious goes on, they just goof off. I've checked.

You really wanna protect the kids from anxiety and whatnot, block the news and all the talking heads trying to manipulate the next generation to their political opinions.

And the government having unfettered knowledge of every site you visit - in particular the more salacious ones - is how we solve that? Surely that won't be used as a political cudgel to secure power at any point, nor will it ever be used to target specific demographics or accidentally get leaked.

Also, they have a large list of exclusions. Some of the phrasing sounds like under-16 people are mostly limited to person-to-person messaging, consuming content produced by others, and being able to access certain services that got exclusions.

Being able to speak publicly is sometimes expressly not allowed in these exclusions, but it is at least implied in other exclusions (which I guess might have originated to allowlist specific companies).

Teens who care to observe the law at all (many will not) will quickly realize that they can figuratively drive a truck right through some of those loopholes. (Example: a "photo editing & hosting" service with accounts and likes and comments is pretty much Twitter or Facebook, once an exodus of kids from "social media" starts congregating there. Bonus rebelious vibe, and the freedom/coolness that your parents and grandparents, and mean school principal haven't yet discovered it.)

If I had an online service that had under-16 among its users who were doing public expression/communication/content, and my business wasn't already clearly excluded, I would be scrambling to lobby for an exclusion. (I would also be discouraging this particular formulation of law, in the public interest, but remiss if I didn't have a backup plan for my immediate business in the case that it passed.)

The thing about a phone is that there's a data plan and it's out of your sight a lot. But to be fair, my son is mostly fine with sticking to these channels for talking to friends. So, it is particular to the kid.

It doesn't hurt that we live in a tight nit community where he can walk to friends' houses, school, etc.

My daughter is younger and probably will want to get a phone more than he does, when she is old enough.

I think those things are a bit more black and white.

How do you define social media? Is HN social media? You engage with others through comments, posts are ranked and it has voting elements as well as your profile has a gamified score for upvotes. Is a Disqus comment on any website social media if that's how we broadly define social media? Where do we draw the line?

You could make a case that leaving reviews on a site are a form of social media too. You can post something there and feel like you need to check back in hopes someone leaves a like or replies. If it were a wearable item you might take a picture of yourself and now hope people engage with it.

As for voting, it's constitutionally mandated that 18 or older can vote, which implies there's no constitutional mandate for anyone younger.

Alcohol and Tobacco are pretty straightforward in the public health context. And you probably don't want your toddlers to drive a car given the risk. The voting age is an exception as it's defined in the 26th amendment. I consider it as political compromise though.

Just as the founding fathers intended, children brandishing fully automatic firearms. James Madison is turning in his grave!

To your point, children cannot own weapons. Most states are a minimum 18 years old for if not 21.

Full automatic weapons have been banned from civilian production for decades now. Semi automatic weapons are not weapons of war; are not the death machines non-gun owners think they are.

I was very anti gun until we (the wife and I) had a need to defend ourselves. We were literally put in a self defense position. We're both all in now and actively train ourselves and educate ourselves. More so, friends that are anti gun are no longer anti gun once they go to the range with me and are educated on what a semi automatic weapon actually is.

TL;DR - anyone anti gun is simple uneducated in the matter.

In this case, we're sort of at the edge of the legal definition. Social media can be viewed as the modern version of the town square (can be, isn't 100% proven out in law yet). If one takes that statement as valid, then the government cannot regulate speech through social media without a very good reason.

But, minors don't have the exact same rights as adults for various reasons (guns, alcohol, privacy at school, etc).

My general impression (IANAL)... the government can likely limit minors' speech on media platforms, however that limit would have to very specific and tightly defined so as not to deny speech to adults. The devil is in the details (implementation)... the legality probably hinges on what method is required to verify age.

Social media is a hard problem. What is exactly the issue? Is it creating a larger social hierarchy than children can cope with? Is it meeting and interacting with strangers? Is it reinforcing dopaminergic pathways from superficial digital content and approvals?

Unfortunately, Florida has gone crazy over the past twenty years. I'd vote with my feet, but this is where my family lives. So, I have little choice but to hunker down and contribute what I can to destabilize the dominant QAnon aligned caucus in the legislature, and hope that in 2026, we get a governor who doesn't play to this nonsense.

Is there science proving that porn is harmful for children? If not, do you see that as an argument for legalizing it?[0]

The first restrictions on tobacco purchases for children were in the 1880s, long before the science was settled on the harms tobacco use causes.

Science is slow, contentious, and produces limited results[1]. If we can only ban things that are scientifically proven to be harmful, what is stopping TikTok from slightly modifying their app and rereleasing it?

I can easily buy products that are BPA free but that just means clever chemists have come up with even worse platicizers like BPS to use as substitutes.

And software can be adapted way faster than chemistry.

[0] I don't. [1] It's definitely still worth studying.

Smoking tobacco was allowed for children for hundreds of years before it was regulated. Today we can hardly fathom how stupid it would be to allow children to smoke. Social media is much more accessible than cigarettes, far more addictive, and rather than messing with your lungs it messes with your brain and personality.

There are many problems with "waiting for the science". One is that it takes many, many decades to get reliable longitudinal studies on things like addiction and how the brain is affected.

There are so many indications that social media is bad for children (including scientific studies), in many different ways. It really should not be controversial to limit use for children. It's not like it is something that they need.

This book, "Smartphone brain: how a brain out of sync with the times can make us stressed, depressed and anxious" by Swedish MD psychiatrist Anders Hansen, brings up one of the aspects (unfortunately I don't know of an English translation): https://www.amazon.se/Sk%C3%A4rmhj%C3%A4rnan-hj%C3%A4rna-str...

Here's a short video with Anders Hansen: https://youtu.be/DwAx2kRwCRI?t=112

Then there's is of course the question of how to limit the use. But that's another issue.

Pretty much every causes cancer in Cali, for example.

If it respects privacy, is secure and convenient and optional, people would love it.

If you're going to introduce legislation like this, then it needs to include provisions that it will not permanently bar those users access to the services once they are of age. I manage my children's social media interaction (near 0 with the exception of YouTube), if their accounts get permanently disabled that would be unfortunate in the future when they are old enough.

Except that they weren't. My life would actually be substantially worse now without most of those apps / websites. I was just another loser growing up in a rural trailer park with no real prospects before I got interested in programming and taught myself employable skills in those online forums and chat apps. It's insane to me that anyone could call themselves a part of a "hacker" community and complain about kids having access to information and wanting legislation to restrict it.