The News
The European Commission is preparing new regulations on social media companies, in a bid to curtail endless scrolling, push notifications, and other features it terms “addictive design.”
Also under consideration is a delay on when children are allowed to make accounts, the latest in a decade-long attempt to rein in social media companies’ access to children.
Rachyl’s view
From a policy perspective, I expect anything short of Australia’s all-out teen social media ban to be fruitless. It’s a no-brainer for kids to bypass age verification — from lying about their birthdays to donning fake mustaches — and more regulations kids can get around won’t change that. While we don’t yet have enough data to show the ban has markedly improved children’s mental health, it has much more teeth than Europe’s efforts.
Either way, regulations alone aren’t enough. One of my takeaways from Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation, which tried to make sense of how social media ruined me and my peers, is that we need societal changes, too. Schools that ban phones during the day, investments in parks, and better ways for children to get to them are some ideas he throws out in the book. But the problem is bigger than any one politician alone or country can solve by adding more laws.