> As noted by another poster[1]: how are you going to enforce it?

The number of comments here that haven’t realized that any regulations would require huge privacy intrusions for everyone is weird to see.

It’s like people are imaging some magical set of rules that would only apply to kids but wouldn’t impact themselves negatively.

Best way to enforce it is to do what the Fed's doing currently: crash the economy, dry up the advertising dollars, and make the advertising platforms wither on the vine.

Let's just hope they don't take too many banks down with 'em in the process.

Totally, that's why I figured it's easier to just ban it for under 18s, then leave it alone for over 18s. I'm an adult - I don't want to be told what I can and can't see.

(Obviously, "banning it" is not so clear-cut. Are you going to force Instagram to require that everyone uploads an ID to verify their age?)

> Totally, that's why I figured it's easier to just ban it for under 18s, then leave it alone for over 18s.

There is no such thing as "leave it alone for over 18s".

If you institute strict age requirements, those have to be enforced for every user account. So yes, that means every site you use would require you to go through something like a KYC process.

Privacy on the internet would be gone. You can't enforce age restrictions if you allow users to remain private.

Not sure how viable this is in the US due to reasons but a centralized auth service could in theory not provide any PII back to the service requesting an age verification, and the auth provider wouldn't necessarily have to be get data back from the service except for the first time a user registers an account.

[Muffled screaming]

Much of the EU uses centralized auth services for critical services like banking, taxes, applying for schools, applying for loans. It's pretty great honestly. There are also APIs for integrating into these where the user chooses what pii they want to share with the service.

I know it's a controversial topic but the argument that age verification and auth services must remove privacy and inevitably leads to mass surveillance is a false narrative which I find kind of funny as if anybody should know these technical realities it's users on hn.

To me, it seems the only way to enforce this is to invoke some sort of KYC mandate for social media sites. Obviously, in practice this would only target legitimate companies. So yeah, I think you would simply need to require that people verify their accounts in the same manner that say a Cryptocurrency exchange verifies a person. In such a universe Elon Musk might finally gets all his users to buy a blue mark.

Such regulations would drive me to use only foreign-owned shady companies who do not care about US law. I'd be sure to spread the word to my fellow citizens.

I think this is pretty silly arguments.

People love to say that the war on drugs didn't work, but I for one haven't consumed illegal drugs even though I have been curious at times. Since I haven't spent time with people who regularly break the law I have not been introduced to any element where I could have had access to illegal drugs. So war on drugs has worked at least on me and I live under to illusion that I am somehow unique.

Yes. Of course addicts will addict. If we ban social medias tomorrow some people will still use them or build new ones, but putting any kind of barrier for entry does have an effect. This is why we complain when something is opt-out instead of opt-in since people do the default thing and if default thing is that social medias are illegal then that will deter many if not even most people from using them.

I reiterate my first question: how are you going to enforce it?

Because the war on drugs has a very specific enforcement mechanism: people who take drugs are given criminal records, locked up in prison, and have their future opportunities permanently curtailed.

Is this your plan for an under-18 accessing social media? Do you think a policy of "we're going to help teens with their mental health" is going to accomplish that goal by specifically and overtly destroying it?

And if that's not your plan, then what is it?

Require by law that everyone on social media authenticates their age (maybe also their names, this would be good way to get rid of bots as well). This can be done with government ID or with via your bank or even with requiring social security number when creating an account. Or government can just make a new digital ID system that you have to go and register at whatever place is suitable for this and you can use that ID for anything and everything you need.

And if that doesn't seem to work just fine social media companies say a million dollars per minor per day that minor uses the service. You see enforcement go up fast AF.

Banning all social media is even simpler.

I think anonymous users might call you a slur, but the worst harassment I've seen online has come from people who proudly show their names and faces.

If there was central way to tie together online identities you could ignore/mute them from all platforms at once

1. How would such verification work on foreigners, who have no social security number?

2. How would "social media" be defined if you want to ban it?

1. Who cares, you cant pass laws on foreign countries anyway

2. Anything where you can post based on this "conversation"

Of course it would be the parents getting criminal records and being locked up, not the kids (or whoever enabled access)

That's a really good point. And a case in point - I remember when I was 12, joining forums, there was always a prompt asking me if I was over the age of 13. Obviously I clicked yes and registered anyway!

But part of the danger is the ubiquity of it I think. Every teenager has social media, so there's this massive peer-pressure. If you don't have it, you get picked on. I wonder if banning it would reduce the numbers at least enough to reduce this effect.

I'm definitely not saying this is some silver bullet... But I think we have to do something, and maybe this is a reasonable starting point.

Its weird how far modern society just assumes laws are code that is run flawlessly on flawless hardware.