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Comment by setgree | Hacker News Reader

I support this in theory, but good luck trying to outmaneuver teens on the internet. I foresee a proliferation of age faking tools, VPNs, etc.

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If you start fining the social media companies for breaking this law, this problem will be fixed quickly. Your demoralization propaganda is a line perpetuated by these companies to avoid responsibility

> If you start fining the social media companies for breaking this law, this problem will be fixed quickly.

A rational solution that would work? Can't have that, won't have that. Who said this? Stop that person from breathing. (sarcasm folks.)

It's a technical problem that isn't easily solvable though, unless facebook outright bans all VPNs.

decentralized approaches would be resilient to that.

Yup. The actual solution here is regulation requiring social media and device manufacturers (networking and user devices like phones) to have simple, accessible, and robust parental controls.

The law proposed here is a stupid hammer that won't do anything but piss everyone off. Definitely what I've come to expect from my worthless state government (I live here, I'm sorry, ive tried to replace these people several times)

> The law proposed here is a stupid hammer that won't do anything but piss everyone off.

Certainly not everyone.

There are many people that back this.

If teens are so so amazing at getting around restrictions why do you propose parental controls? No these companies should be responsible for not letting teens use their platform just as tobacco companies and those selling their products are responsible for not selling to teens. We already have parental controls and this is a do nothing solution which puts the onus on already overwhelmed parents and fixes literally nothing.

We’re looking for actual solutions here, not to check a box and pretend we tried

If they worked, a solid set of device parental controls would let the parent manage their kid's usage of social media without the privacy risks of doing effective age verification.

It'd be a privacy nightmare if everyone ended up sending all the major websites a copy of their passport/driving license to get access.

And policies like "tick box to confirm you're over 18" are a pointless joke.

You may be surprised to learn that when asked, teens would actually prefer that everyone give up social media.

The key word is “everyone” and it’s a collective action problem.

Excellent article in The Atlantic titled “End the Phone Based Childhood Now” which covers this extensively.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/03/teen-...

The study cited in this excellent - but paywalled - article is here: https://bfi.uchicago.edu/working-paper/2023-131/

I forgot about that, that's huge. A bad Nash equilibrium to the benefit of tech companies and advertisers and the detriment of young people.

You only have to disrupt them enough to make them useless to kids. There needs to be a critical mass of users for the social media tool to work. If some kids get through, fine. Liquor stores sell kids with fake IDs alcohol sometimes. But most kids won't be able to get access making the site more or less useless to those that can. Any large enough mass (someone at a school distributes to lots of people at the school) will likely be detected and destroyed.

Probably only a vpn with ip outside Florida required, unless they start verifying the age of everyone.

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