It is an unconstitutional law; it is following the path of similar unconstitutional laws¹²³. Where is the experiment?
¹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Entertainment_Merchan...
²https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reno_v._American_Civil_Liberti... (sections about minor access to indecent material struck down)
³https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/ohio/oh...
- social media being optimized for addiction
- social media potentially compromising minors’ physical safety
- social media use having documented adverse mental health outcomes for minors
- the fact that social media use requires an ongoing contractual relationship between the company and the minor
I could see these factors tipping the balance on the “compelling government interest” question, though I see less of an argument for “narrow tailoring”.
I think that the rest of the points you brought up are cultural problems and therefore not in the purview of legality
The features I listed all relate to “protecting the children” in some way, which is why I thought they could be the basis for courts to distinguish previous case law regarding the first part of the test.
Almost right. Strict scrutiny has a third factor [1]: Does the law use the available method which is least restrictive of speech?
An alternative method to banning young children on social media could be to apply the caretaker-consent-or-ban condition on social media only for students on the physical premises of public schools while having the public schools teach students the pros and cons of social media (hopefully noting that social media is more helpful than harmful for most teenagers [2]). Enforcement would fall on parents and public school teachers. That's less restrictive of minors' speech rights because the ban doesn't apply everywhere, and also less chilling of social media sites' speech rights because having to collect more of users' personal information for age verification is burdensome. Not saying that my example method is a good one, just more likely to pass strict scrutiny.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_scrutiny#Applicability
[2] https://www.techdirt.com/2023/12/18/yet-another-massive-stud...
I can't think of a single argument that fits with trusting a parent's choice for a 14 year old that doesn't trust it for a 13 year old, that also ignore's that parent's choice for a 16 year old.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK594763/#:~:text=Social...
Given it's Florida and the political leanings of it's governor, I would argue the law is more in line with CCP/Communist values: attempt to disrupt the communication networks of a demographic that is highly against you.
The reason this matters is that the precedential effect of a prior opinion such as Brown depends on how similar the underlying facts are to the present dispute. If a court wants to go in a different direction, it will usually prefer not to overturn the previous opinion, but rather to say that it doesn't apply here because the facts are different.
Only the nerds did that and it was in a computer lab. And they knew enough about keeping up appearances to hit Alt-Tab when an adult was getting close.
It’s not like we don’t have other laws that restrict what we can do or where we can do it.
In order to deny minors access to potentially harmful speech, the CDA effectively suppresses a large amount of speech that adults have a constitutional right to receive and to address to one another. That burden on adult speech is unacceptable if less restrictive alternatives would be at least as effective in achieving the legitimate purpose that the statute was enacted to serve.
That's just me grabbing a snippet from Wikipedia, but it seems like a different issue than the impact of social media and whether it should be allowed by minors w/o parental consent.
But of course the elephant in the room is that the makeup of the Court has changed in a markedly more conservative direction and has proven itself not averse to revisiting previously settled law.