A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media

https://www.wired.com/story/protecting-kids-social-media-act/

by Freddie111 • 3 years ago

83 103 3 years ago

proc03• 3 years ago

Right, and how will they determine what a social media site is? People in power don't get it because they're mostly from the generation when the Internet hadn't yet taken over every aspect of civilization.

Trying to impose a ban is such a lazy and naive solution. Kids will find alternatives. There are thousands of options for kids to go online and interact with one another. My guess would be that video games would become the next social platforms, and then what, ban video games? ban multiplayer games? I'm not saying do nothing. There are plenty of potential and creative solutions. Maybe something like incentivizing companies to build a kid-friendly version of their apps, and advising parents on how to be aware of what they're using. Banning tech is usually not the answer in a world where tech is more and more part of everything.

Zetobal2• 3 years ago

Snore. It's the same argument as always from absolutists. If most adult people can't handle the web in it's current how should kids? Do you believe kids are harder to scam than your granny? 2

proc03• 3 years ago

I don't get your comment, maybe you could clarify. Kids know technology better than older people, yes. Scamming is already illegal and should be dealt with accordingly. Banning kids from social media will not work, other apps and games will just add features that will essentially provide the same experience. The fact that kids are suffering from social pressure is a human problem, not a tech problem.

cultureswitch2• 3 years ago

If you read the proposal, pretty much every website, messaging platform or online game would fall under the definition of social network.

proc03• 3 years ago

You understand almost all games are online now, how would that work?

jqpabc1233• 3 years ago

In other words, US bill will *require* all social media to violate user privacy.

Zetobal2• 3 years ago

How? Because they take the burden of the companies to age verify their users? Right now they really argue that a kid should have read the ToS and get of Scots free if something happens on their platform.

bdcravens2• 3 years ago

Are you willing to submit your photo ID information to Y Combinator? After all, they have no way of knowing any of us aren't 12 without that information.

friendlyHornet2• 3 years ago

Yeah just give a scan of your ID to Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok, Snapchat, etc

There is absolutely no chance that it will ever get leaked, misused or stored unencrypted

rhaway84773• 3 years ago

Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to simply have parental education around the harms of social media for kids under age XYZ?

I mean, I’m all in favor of the goals of this bill. I think social media is a horrible negative for people of all ages, but especially children since they largely don’t have the mental capability to defend against the smartest people in the world trying to hijack their brains.

But I can’t see how a “social media” ban can actually work. And im not even sure it’s actually better than parental education and information.

MrPatan2• 3 years ago

How is parental education going for "don't do drugs" or "don't commit crimes"?

hnlmorg4• 3 years ago

Generally pretty well considering that those who you describe are a small subset of society. Though plenty of news networks would like to convince you otherwise because scare stories attract viewers more than “society is generally doing ok” style stories.

I do take issues with the drug laws in a lot of countries though. They are, in part, based around marginalising individuals rather than protecting people from harm. But this is a whole other discussion.

Mindwipe3• 3 years ago

Better than banning them is.

john_the_writer5• 3 years ago

Much better than the "war on drugs".

bdcravens2• 3 years ago

Given the social interactions that exist, shouldn't this include online gaming platforms?

crooked-v2• 3 years ago

This seems like it would have been a great idea about thirty years ago, but would be functionally impossible to even try to enforce working from scratch today.

mattmanser3• 3 years ago

How would it be functionally impossible?

At one point kids could buy cigarettes.

Now, across hundreds of thousands of stores, they can't.

There's only a few social media sites, it's seems infinitely easier. Trivial even.

woodruffw3• 3 years ago

When you buy cigarettes in a store, you normally get carded.

It stands to reason that an equivalent online system would require a similar online solution; most people are not particularly enthused by the idea of having to present an ID to consume any information that could potentially considered to fall under “social media.”

cultureswitch2• 3 years ago

Requiring every social network to get proof of age for every user would in practice mean destroying the little user privacy that was left.

On top of that, the worldwide leader in age verification software is none other than mindgeek, the porn giant. This kind of law would effectively give this company a file with the official ID and complete social network usage pattern of everyone above 13 in the country.

john_the_writer5• 3 years ago

If you went to the store and instead of looking at your ID, the scanned it and posted it on their website, would you agree? Would you be okay asking a 14 year old to post their ID online? I suspect your answer would be no to both.

Don't think for a second you scanning your ID and providing it to facebook/twitter/youtube would be at all safe.

runnerup• 3 years ago

Ah, yes, the famous social network platforms of 1993. More to the point, <13 year olds have been effectively outlawed from social media platforms since 1998 due to COPPA. It hasn't really stopped kids though. They just, go on the internet and lie.

seanmcdirmid• 3 years ago

The equivalent talkers were a thing in 1993. I found them using gopher in the library my first year of university. Anyone else here remember Somewhere Else? I do remember lots of underaged girls and boys (but no one under 13, I think) on there.

Scoundreller• 3 years ago

I didn't need to lie on newsgroups back then!

kaetemi• 3 years ago

The trick used to be just requiring a valid credit card.

zarzavat2• 3 years ago

Many adults don’t have credit cards (like me). Many kids have do have physical access to their parent’s credit cards.

226_ebro_treaty2• 3 years ago

Blanket ban anyone under 14 from having an online account, IMHO.

Ekaros2• 3 years ago

Let's be sensible and set it at 21. It cannot be less harmful than alcohol.

226_ebro_treaty2• 3 years ago

18 for 99% of stuff is honestly fine with me.

goatlover• 3 years ago

Why should there be age restrictions once you're legally an adult at 18? 21 is unnecessarily puritanical (EU countries don't have that) and most teenagers are going to drink anyway, just as they're going to find a way to bypass age verifications for their social media of choice.

mormegil• 3 years ago

Which social networks do they have on mind? Facebook, Instagram, Twitter do not allow children under 13 to register an account due to already existing legislation (COPPA).

potamic• 3 years ago

Youtube is also a social network, ain't it?

TheAceOfHearts• 3 years ago

This seems a bit too far reaching of a legislative act under the guise of protecting the children.

Surely we could come up with a solution that isn't an outright ban? Especially as technology has become so commonplace and many of our social interactions happen in digital spaces.

In any case, maybe it would be interesting to evaluate how other countries have approached these problems. I know that in South Korea you need a government ID to play certain multiplayer videogames, it would be interesting to explore the impact of these systems and what lessons can be gleamed.

Since I'm not a parent myself I haven't really considered the problem domain with much care or consideration, but maybe some hacker parents could share their thoughts and insights as they've dealt with the existing ecosystem?

hnlmorg4• 3 years ago

The issue as I see it isn’t going to be solved by forcing social networks to gather even more personal information about individuals (eg proof of ID and proof of age). The issue is how social networks are engineered, either by chance or by design, to promote negativity in the pursuit of engagement.

If we can find a way to declaw social networks then we’d have a healthier ecosystem for all ages.

But this is a much harder problem to solve.

jahsome• 3 years ago

I wonder if it really is harder, or maybe the solution is just less obvious?

csydas• 3 years ago

In general I hope this Bill doesn't pass, because it's extremely poorly written, and based on the list of exceptions and the loose wording, I'm not sure the Bill authors have any idea _how_ any of this should be enforced.

https://www.schatz.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/protecting_kids_...

That's the actual Bill, and it's quite a fast read and in fairly plain language, but it's mostly an empty several pages.

Multiple times the Bill states that it is not to be construed as a requirement for Government ID, but then in Section 7 regarding the pilot program, it mentions these as a reference on how to validate users in the pilot program. No other definitions or examples of "reasonable". In fact, the validation method in Section 3 simply says

IN GENERAL
A social media platform shall take
reasonable steps beyond merely requiring attestation, taking into account existing
age verification technologies, to verify the age of individuals who are account
holders on the platform.

That's not a ton of guidance besides Government ID's referenced later on, and leaving it to "reasonable" is really too vague; if a user signs up with a gmail email address, is it enough to assume that because Gmail requires a user to be a certain age that they are validated? Is it Gmail's fault if it turns out the owner of an address misrepresented their name or is it the social media company's fault? How exactly are the Social Media companies supposed to validate this?

More importantly, how is an individual supposed to validate it without giving out more information on themselves or spreading records of their Government Identification to a bunch of sites?

The exceptions list in Section 2, Paragraph 6 subsection C is way too big and you can guess the businesses that the Bill has in mind for each entry. But it's also so loose; if TikTok starts adding in-app purchases for the items in ads you get, is it now exempted under ection 2, Paragraph 6 subsection C item i? After all, it's facilitating transactions now with the algorithm, and logically a guardian has given consent to use the platform if they forked over their card number so their kid can make purchases.

There is so much loose language and intent here when the crux of the bill is hidden under Section 6, which is to tone down the algorithm usage.

Bender• 3 years ago

I believe the only correct way to solve this is to add an RTA header on sites that permit user-generated content and require the most common devices and browsers to once again recognize this header and instead of just treating it as adult content, also use it for user-generated content. Then put the liability on the parents to lock down devices. Let parents decide which domains/urls to approve-list in the devices.

If a site with user-generated content is missing this header give them a warning, then fine them {n} percentage of their net revenue per day until remediated. After {x} days out of compliance seize their domains.

If a child/parent is having compliance issues on their devices leading to problems, hand it over to social services like they would for any other social/family issue. Social service issues are not tech platform issues.

Using RTA in HTML:

    <meta name="RATING" content="RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA" />

PHP:

    header("Rating: RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA");

Apache:

    Header set Rating "RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA"

HAProxy:

    http-response set-header rating "RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA"

NGinx:

    location / { add_header Rating 'RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA'; }

john_the_writer5• 3 years ago

This would 100% work for techies. I'd put a rule on my router to not allow devices to go here. Woot.

But sadly most people wouldn't know how to use this info. It's the first great idea I've read though.

michael9k• 3 years ago

Don't know how this could be implemented in a good way (so FB etc do not get access to important identity information), but trying to limit social media for kids below 13 is a fantastic idea.

One could wish the adults/parents would limit this themselves, but sadly this is seldom the case. For some reason it seems most parents really are clueless to the level of harm imposed by social media to their kids?!

yaur• 3 years ago

COPA already effectively does this, but kids just lie about their age. Making FB and company liable for those cases where parents decide to let their preteens go wild on social media seems insane.

zo1• 3 years ago

So plan B would be to make the parents liable? Just have Facebook refer suspected cases for police to confirm.

madaxe_again• 3 years ago

I think it’s also that kids are far smarter than generally given credit for, and are perfectly capable of going behind their parents’ backs.

What is needed, and has been for some time, is an identity service.

This does exist in some parts of the world - here in Portugal, for instance, I access government services online with a smartcard, password and 2FA - and I don’t see why they couldn’t extend this as a general SSO service using oauth or whatever to provide accredited identities to providers who require it due to regulation. The provider doesn’t need to receive anything from the auth apart from a user id, or a “deny access”.

soulofmischief• 3 years ago

Because humans have the right to reasonable privacy, which is a prerequisite to protecting other human rights, such as activism and free speech.

john_the_writer5• 3 years ago

I don't understand that "behind parents back" bit.

My teen kids aren't on social. I know this because their dumb phones don't support it, and their computers are not permitted in their rooms (Kitchen table only).

I suppose they could get on, through a friends smart-phone, but that would be limited to the time they spend on the bus to/from school.

Kwpolska• 3 years ago

I don't want Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/etc knowing my real identity, and I don't want my government knowing my Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/etc profile ID.

InCityDreams• 3 years ago

to the level of harm imposed by social media to their kids

That 'level of harm' being decided by yourself, I'll wager?

RobinL• 3 years ago

As mentioned by Hilary Clinton in a recent interview on the rest of politics, it's very telling that when silicon valley entrepreneurs advertise for nannies, they often have strict requirements for minimising screen time.

Seems like there's pretty strong revealed preference here (watch what people do not what they say). The people building this tech know it's harmful to kids.

As a parent the argument I hear most often is that all the other kids have it so it's almost impossible to stop your own kids. I don't necessarily buy that, my kids are still young but I intend to keep them away from social media as long as possible.

htag3• 3 years ago

This is movement is going to be widely regarded as on of the largest prohibitions in our era.

* Whatever verification system a user has to do to prove they are older than 13 will also being to freak users out about 'whoes listening'. It's insane to think a First Name, Last Name, and Address might be tied to _every reddit account_.

* That data will be used for government surveillance. Maybe I should start creating a hat out of metallic kitchen supplies, but I largely think 'how can we spy on more Americans" has been a central political battle fought over the last 3 decades. It's a long fight, not over.

* This could cause all users to stop adopting these public networks, and and move to underground networks. Some underground networks will just normal application with some social space that aren't targeted. Some might be based on traditional dark-web style services. Others might be based on something more web3-y.

badrabbit3• 3 years ago

A system to verify age is not needed. Simply making it illegal and holding parents accountable is enough.

It's one of those things where perfection is the enemy of good. Some kids will do it anyways but parents can install hard to remove monitoring software on devices and the penalty can be similar to a somewhat serious traffic citation.

hnlmorg4• 3 years ago

We haven’t had a good track record in recent years of businesses honouring the spirit of the law. For example cookie consent banners with horrible dark patterns aren’t necessary to operate in the EU but some companies feel this is a better approach than reducing the amount of data they harvest. Likewise some companies will see this new legislation as an excuse to collect more data too.

The fact that a lot of social networks require or request phone numbers “for security” rather than TOTP codes (for example) is another such example of how data collection is hidden behind “safety”.

cykros• 3 years ago

I'd love to live in a town with these parents with superpowers you envision. In my town, people look at me like I have 3 heads when I explain we've enabled Microsoft's Family Link on our son's computer and that screen time rules make it so he just can't use it after bedtime, which is why unlike their kids, he's not up til 2 am.

Installing software? How about just using what's already there and begging you to use it.

Forget about showing credentials to use social media. The issue here may be needing credentials to breed -- but, you know, who watches the watchmen?

MagicMoonlight• 3 years ago

Parents don’t do that and nobody is going to be able to enforce a law specifically against them

htag3• 3 years ago

1. Start asking the software engineers in your company about their experience with parental control software as a teenager. Me, and all my friends, had clever bypasses on several systems. In addition, this type of story seems to be very common.

2. The amount of teenage smoking/drinking/drug use is pretty considerable. This is even true if you select for involved parents. Shouldn't parents focus be on preventing these? If parents can't stop this, why would they be able to stop social media?

3. Without age verification, how would you know someone on social media is underage?

4. Wouldn't this disproportionality punish lower income families, and richer families could more easily pay the fine?

Manfred• 3 years ago

There are solutions like Yivi[1] (previously IRMA) that allow you to have a wallet of attributes signed by federal or local government (eg. "user is over 13" or "user lives in Wisconsin"). That way you never have to share your identity, just certain attributes that are specific to the use-case.

[1] https://www.yivi.app/en

endisneigh7• 3 years ago

Even with that it would be trivial to uniquely identify specific individuals. If anything that would be worse than the current situation as you would know certain attributes are definitely not spoofed.

LinuxBender• 3 years ago

Are those attributes reversible to an index of real PII? Asking because these things all seem to oopsie leak or get sold or hacked or turn out to be sitting in a public S3 by mistake eventually.

How does the site know that I am using my wallet attributes and not someone else's?

echelon2• 3 years ago

verification system a user has to do to prove they are older than 13

Once LLM-powered bots flood social media [1], websites will have to implement verification as a means of survival.

[1] That hasn't even really begun. Wait until ChatGPT+ capabilities can be run from home at next to zero cost.

fwn2• 3 years ago

I read this a lot, but I don't get it. ...and I don't get the implied paradigm shift that's supposed to happen with better text generators.

If people generate better content with bots, that's a good thing. If the content people generate with bots is worse, then they're not going to be successful with it.

If bad content outperforms good content, that would be a problem for the social network. ... but that would be a problem regardless of the tools used to create that content.

bigbacaloa• 3 years ago

Government should not usurp parental functions. Stay the hell out of my house.

Dalewyn• 3 years ago

COPPA already exists and websites that properly adhere to it ask for age verification (granted usually in no verifiable capacity) and refuse service to anyone under 13 years old.

Personal anecdata, way back in the 90s in my childhood, a games website I used to frequent actually demanded potential users (read: kids) under 13 years old to fax in written consent from the parents to collecting information. Websites used to actually take COPPA seriously back then.

If this bill makes compliance to COPPA more stringent, well, the law already mandated it anyway. Kids and can't-be-arsed parents will find workarounds, no doubt, and the world will keep spinning.

As an aside, I would rather the US government handle identification (they already have all the goods anyway) than the likes of GAFA.

traveler01• 3 years ago

Why are always these US politicans talking about banning something?

This decisions should only be up to the parents, not someone in DC...

forinti2• 3 years ago

Should it be up to parents if children drink or smoke? I don't think so.

Furthermore, peer pressure is very strong, and children and adolescents will make your life miserable if they can't have what everyone else has. So it would be a lot easier if nobody else had social media.

jqpabc1233• 3 years ago

Should it be up to parents if children drink or smoke? I don't think so.

Whether you want to accept it or not, it really is up to the parents.

endisneigh7• 3 years ago

Interesting to compare this thread with the banning gas one in New York. In general once you accept the government making decisions for you “for your best interest”, don’t be shocked once they start doing things you disagree with.

This is why I generally do not support any bans dictated by the government.

In this case it’s difficult to find a reasonable solution that’s not draconian. You could tell parents to use screen limiting tools but those are unlikely to be used by the parents whose children need it the most.

Perhaps making social media require a $1/year fee with it being returned to you after 6 months would stop the vast majority of children.

throwaway473825• 3 years ago

It's also interesting to compare which countries have banned gas in new buildings (the Nordics, the Netherlands) and which countries have draconian surveillance (China, Russia).

endisneigh7• 3 years ago

United States also has draconian surveillance, as well as the UK and several EU countries- or was that your point?

mikewarot2• 3 years ago

Edward Snowden basically threw his life away to prove we're completely surveilled here in the US, and the "Western World" in general.

What's different here that you're free to criticize the Government without fear of (open) repression.

dirtyid• 3 years ago

Don't care much for bans, but would not mind some sort of oauth system that includes age and ability for platforms/users to block interactions / content according to age range. I want to filter content a little bit like one filters dating profiles.

jacquesm• 3 years ago

I'm not convinced that social media is a net positive, no matter what the age.

sycamoretrees• 3 years ago

I'm all for it, though I won't comment on this bill in particular, which seems to be lacking.

There are, of course, ways to implement this that don't include sending even more personal data to social media companies. The most obvious way, for starters, would be through a government app or system that simply tells Facebook "This user is over the age of 13" without sending over any more information.

The reality is that we do need to do something about the issue, just like how porn shouldn't be freely available to literal children. It's an inevitable consequence of the internet moving into the very center of our lives.

bentt• 3 years ago

How about this… if your social network has ads, is funded by ads, etc, then ALL of the network falls under FTC compliance for children’s advertising.

mikewarot2• 3 years ago

What we need are laws requiring Social Media to support children. To give them a safe space that their parents can monitor. It should be a simple affirmative thing, like a birth-date, with no other authentication required.

That way a parent can set up the account for the child, and then monitor their activities through the site. Once they age out, their parents roles are reduced appropriately.

The same should also be true in reverse, so that adults can monitor the social media of their elderly parents, to keep them from getting scammed. This can be negotiated and agreed to by the parents.

Either way, a person under care of another should see zero ads.

A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media

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