How would it be different than age restricting voting, driving, or alcohol and tobacco sales? It seems there's precedent for treating minors differently than adults in many ways.
As for voting, it's constitutionally mandated that 18 or older can vote, which implies there's no constitutional mandate for anyone younger.
>"In Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U.S. 629 (1968), the Supreme Court upheld a harmful to minors, or “obscene as to minors,” law, affirming the illegality of giving persons under 17 years of age access to expressions or depictions of nudity and sexual content for “monetary consideration.”
>Judge Fuld of the Nassau County District Court had convicted Sam Ginsberg, who owned a small convenience store in Long Island, New York, where he sold “adult magazines” and was accused of selling them to a 16-year-old boy on two occasions."
It's not good for kids to have unrestricted access to pornography in the same way that it's not good for them to have access to unrestricted social media.
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.
Drawing the lines between what types of media are and aren’t allowed is a major issue with this type of law, regardless of if you think it’s a good idea or not.
"I hope someone likes my review" is not that much different than "I hope someone likes my tweet" or "I hope someone replies to my IG post" or "I hope someone replies to my HN comment".
All 4 scenarios trigger the same thing which is setting up a future expectation that's hopefully met while you wait with anticipation of the event. Is that the process they are trying to get a handle on?
Personally I don't know how any of that could get enforced. Even making the internet read-only wouldn't work because that wouldn't stop people from internally comparing themselves to someone else who is allowed to post. Although that type of thing has been going on since advertising existed.
E.g. alcohol. How do we stop kids form drinking alcohol? How do you define alcohol? What about kids medicine that includes alcohol, what about medical procedures that insert substances with alcohol content. What about shops that get conned by kids with fake ID. What if the label gets scratched off and kid doesn't know it had alcohol. What if a parent gives their child a sip of beer. What about old home remedies that include whiskey. What about colic medicine that has alcohol, okay What about carving exceptions for babies, etc etc etc.
Granted some of those are contrived, but it's not as black and White as you think.
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.