Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

Let the experiment take place, I say. Just like Oregon’s now-repealed drug use decriminalization bill. It didn’t achieve its intended goals, but there is now a mass of data about what assumptions were wrong, implementation issues, etc. IMO there is real value in letting states put such changes into play to get beyond the debate and actually test the hypotheses.

I recall hearing Professor Haidt (NYU) describe an experiment he ran with teenagers. He asked them how much they&#x27;d have to be paid (per month?) to not use some social media site. The typical answer was ~$40.<p>Then he said that they were going to get all the other kids in the school off the social media site, and asked again what the student would want to be paid to be off the site. The answer was that students would actually pay to be in that situation.<p>For some kids at least, this is a coordination problem, where they&#x27;d all rather not be on social media, but assuming others are, they want to be there. I could be getting the details&#x2F;dollar values wrong, and I don&#x27;t know that this bill is the right way to address the issue.<p>But it&#x27;s pretty clear that social media is something that many teens wish they could avoid, but currently feel they can&#x27;t. That doesn&#x27;t mean we need to Do Something™, but it does mean that we&#x27;re not currently in the optimal situation.<p>Edit: found the experiment. Haidt wrote about it, but it was done by University of Chicago economist Leonardo Bursztyn. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2024&#x2F;03&#x2F;teen-childhood-smartphone-use-mental-health-effects&#x2F;677722&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2024&#x2F;03&#x2F;teen-...</a>

The biggest problem I see is that we’re now essentially requiring ID to use substantial parts of the internet. So many business only have a Facebook page, Google maps has social features.<p>I already didn’t want a Facebook account just to see a businesses specials, now I’ll need to present ID too?<p>Certainly interested to see how all this plays out.

I&#x27;ll be the odd guy out and say it should probably be illegal to attempt to enter a contract (AUP, privacy policy, etc) with a minor anyway (for a lot of reasons around exploitation), so I don&#x27;t _really_ have a major issue with this at face value.<p>I know the devil is in the details though, so kinda curious what the actual provisions are.<p>The alternative is a free internet, where we don&#x27;t need accounts to do things, because we&#x27;re not building or storing advertising profiles on users. Hmmmm... imagine that.

I don&#x27;t think this is really about protecting minors, or hurting big tech, or scoring some short term votes, or anything like that.<p>I feel it&#x27;s more likely that the long game is ultimately about de-anonymizing the Internet.<p>This particular objective is a solid plausible explanation of so many initiatives over the last few years. Perhaps not full public de-anonymization, but at the very least to make it easier for things like CALEA to exist in these spaces as well. The public is constantly shown techniques in whodunnit TV shows where the good guys can instantly look up an IP address or other identifying log entry and associate it with a name&#x2F;address&#x2F;etc.<p>IMHO, the plan is to make Business As Usual untenable and make it cheaper and financially safer for tech companies to give in and identify everybody as a survival mechanism. When its safer to record a passport&#x2F;realid&#x2F;etc as a legal defense then at some point it&#x27;ll be done.<p>After that happens then it&#x27;s easy to plug in something like CALEA. The public is already being primed to accept it with the benefits being constantly shown on the likes of CSI&#x2F;NCIS&#x2F;etc&#x2F;etc&#x2F;etc shows.<p>Of course, from a profit perspective, it certainly wouldn&#x27;t hurt that all this valuable user data that is being being compiled is finally cross checked and validated.<p>Or maybe I&#x27;m completely wrong and there&#x27;s no ulterior motive and there&#x27;s nothing more to it than politicians trying to be seen to be doing the right thing. Hah! I&#x27;m way too cynical for that.

&gt;Critics have said the bill violates the U.S. Constitution&#x27;s First Amendment protections for free speech and that parents, not the government, should make decisions about the online presence of their children of all ages.<p>It&#x27;s extremely difficult for parents to stop their children, especially early teens from using social media. This law should make it easier and it would put the work on Meta, Snap, Tiktok, Pinterest, Twitter to help parents.<p>I&#x27;m personally glad that I grew up without social media but I worry about the kids growing up now. The amount of random junk young kids are exposed to on social media is worrying.

People might see it as harsh but looking at reality and the hard numbers collected about the gigantic negative impact it has on kids and teenagers this is the right move, would even push it till 18.

I grew up as social media came into being(mid 2000s). When I was 13, I got Myspace. When I was 16, I got Facebook. It wasn&#x27;t until well into college that I realized the impact social media had on my mental health. I would go further and say nobody until 18 should have social media, but that may be unrealistic in 2024.

Does this require everyone present a government ID to access anything online? Are international content provider going to be compelled to report transgressions to Florida state authorities?

&quot;I don&#x27;t want my kids using social media without my permission&quot; is a problem that already has a solution: put parental controls on your kids devices.<p>We don&#x27;t need Daddy Government to make decisions that can and should be made by parents.

The recent World Happiness Report[0] concluded:<p>&gt; In many but not all regions, the young are happier than the old. But in North America happiness has fallen so sharply for the young that they are now less happy than the old. By contrast, in the transition countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the young are much happier than the old. In Western Europe as a whole happiness is similar at all ages, while elsewhere it tends to decline over the life cycle (with an occasional upturn for the old).<p>I think social media is a red herring. For whatever reason, young people in America are unhappy and instead if dealing with hard problems we think &quot;let&#x27;s just take social media away, that will fix it&quot;. Does Finland not have social media? Why are young people in Finland happier than they are in America?<p>I predict this trend will continue, we will take social media away from kids and they will still be unhappy as they look for things to do in their small apartment while mom and dad look at their cell phones.<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;worldhappiness.report&#x2F;ed&#x2F;2024&#x2F;happiness-and-age-summary&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;worldhappiness.report&#x2F;ed&#x2F;2024&#x2F;happiness-and-age-summ...</a>

Pretty wild to watch the basic rights of people in red states backslide in real time. Now there is the (what should be unnecessary) legal question of whether you can even run a social media platform with anonymous users in the state of Florida. Needing de facto governmental verification to communicate with people on the internet is something I had hoped I would never live to see in America. Hopefully it will not be fully enforced to the letter of the law.

Hey Reuters, no thanks for not linking to the Florida bill in question. The bill is CS&#x2F;CS&#x2F;HB 3 - Online Protections for Minors [1][2].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.myfloridahouse.gov&#x2F;Sections&#x2F;Bills&#x2F;billsdetail.aspx?BillId=80144" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.myfloridahouse.gov&#x2F;Sections&#x2F;Bills&#x2F;billsdetail.as...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.flsenate.gov&#x2F;Session&#x2F;Bill&#x2F;2024&#x2F;00003&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.flsenate.gov&#x2F;Session&#x2F;Bill&#x2F;2024&#x2F;00003&#x2F;</a>

I think this adds an incredible amount of risk to almost any US-based social media site, big or small, regardless of which state you&#x27;re in.<p>You can&#x27;t 100.0% block all Floridians from accessing your site, especially with GeoIP databases. This means someone who is close enough to the border of Alabama or Georgia with an IP address reportedly in another state could easily find reason to sue you.<p>And because you&#x27;re in the US, you can easily be made to show up in a costly court battle over state lines.<p>This is horrifying news for small&#x2F;medium sized social media sites.

worth remembering what this sort of stupidity actually means: creating the infrastructure for US government(s) mandated and approved identity verification on the Internet. this has a number of serious consequences, unrelated to children learning awesome dance moves:<p>- it&#x27;s obviously a massive violation of whatever remains of &quot;free speech&quot; in the US, and allowing this to happen creates a precedent for nibbling at all sorts of other things - creates precedent that children are even more subservient to their parents and random whims of whatever politicians are in charge at any point<p>- it creates the technical infrastructure and precedent for random US governments and whatever lunatics control them at the time to mediate permission to access websites<p>- it creates a massive database of PII, this time focussed on kids, which will be accessed endlessly by random companies, and will de facto have no actual access controls<p>- it spews government-required and validated PII around loads of random websites - hacking a site and then quietly passively copying all their calls to the database will be of great interest to fuckwits around the world<p>- will require trying harder to geo-locate users, creating even more PII and having even more of it being government-audited<p>- creates a huge hammer for politicians to beat up on unfavoured companies &#x2F; blackmail them<p>- undermines the functioning of the US as a coherent unified state

Could we maybe also start passing laws under which internet connected devices such as phones are not allowed in schools during class? I fear that we’re raising a generation of scatter brained know nothings with attention spans of a fruit fly, who watched YouTube in class instead of listening to the teacher. That is not without cost - some of those kids will have much worse life outcomes due to the lack of even basic education.

The biggest thing about social media is that it NEVER stops. Growing up, if you had trouble with bullying at school, it ended when you went home, your home was your safe zone. Now there are no safe zones.<p>not only that, but i fully believe that kids are WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY to impressionable and influenceable. there is a reason kids can&#x27;t do a lot of things until 18 (even through the brain doesn&#x27;t fully develop till 25). kids should not be influenced by social media to be doing permanent things that could harm themselves (like gender transitioning, getting a tatoo or piercing, or doing something dangerous challege) or their future careers (like breaking the law so they have a criminal record).<p>honestly social media is a wonderful thing, but something has to be done. i personally believe that parents need to have more power in discipling their children. i don&#x27;t like the fact that laws like this have to be created, but i see that they have to exists with the more power they take away from the parents.

It was already de-facto illegal for people under 13 to have social accounts. Do you know any kids younger than that on social media? I do.<p>This is the equivalent of paper bags for beer cans - it will do nothing to fix the problem, but it will make children slightly more secretive about their internet usage, which will make some situations (grooming, bullying) even worse.

I was curious how the bill defines &quot;social media&quot; since it is a vague term. Here&#x27;s the bill: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.flsenate.gov&#x2F;session&#x2F;bill&#x2F;2024&#x2F;3&#x2F;billtext&#x2F;er&#x2F;pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.flsenate.gov&#x2F;session&#x2F;bill&#x2F;2024&#x2F;3&#x2F;billtext&#x2F;er&#x2F;pdf</a><p>The definition starts near the bottom of page 3.<p>Seems to me like this criteria would be hard to prove and easy for platforms to game:<p>&gt; Ten percent or more of the daily active users who are younger than 16 years of age spend on average 2 hours per day or longer on the online forum, website, or application on the days when using the online forum, website, or application during the previous 12 months or, if the online forum, website, or application did not exist during the previous 12 months, during the previous month;<p>Anyone know why that criteria even exists in the first place?

Pains me as it does to admit it, I&#x27;m OK with this, and I&#x27;m so glad that I grew up in an age before TikTok existed.<p>Social media in its current form is designed to be as addictive as possible as a method of revenue generation. That&#x27;s it. The more time we spend on these apps, the more money they make. Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are designed from the ground-up to take as much time and attention as possible by using the same tricks that slot machines use. This is well-known and well-documented amongst _people like us_ who work in tech. It&#x27;s less well-known outside our bubble.<p>Plenty of adults are unable to break the curse of the endless scroll, so what chance do children have?<p>It is, in my opinion, as dangerous as cigarettes, and we don&#x27;t allow 11-year-olds to buy those. I don&#x27;t know if a ban is the way to go, but something&#x27;s gotta change.

In light of empirical evidence, it is positive legislation. However, let us not be fooled that the problem is the algorithms. In my anecdote I see a clear divide between the classic phase of interaction in chronological order and algorithmic intervention.<p>The action of algorithms orchestrating human interactions reminds me of Asimov&#x27;s Mule[0] and at this point in events it is certain that the algorithm builders have very fine control over human mental patterns. If I were to choose just one target for my efforts to sanitize the internet I would focus my fire on algorithms. Legislate without mercy.<p>[0]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Foundation_and_Empire" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Foundation_and_Empire</a>

Great. I think few people have any doubts about social media being a net negative for young people.

There’s an alternative to a blanket restriction on all types of social media:<p>When I was growing up, there was basically just ICQ (predominantly chat, sparse text profile), then MSN (predominantly chat, sparse text profile with one or a few profile photos), then early MySpace where nobody was uploading their real identity. I think it would have been a shame to not have access to those types of networks. I met so many people through those types of networks.<p>The law could put a restriction only on the post-2005 type of social media which is about publishing a curated stream of life updates with one’s real identity in rich media (photos, videos). If you take that all of that out, there’s nothing to ‘like’ or compare yourself to.

[dupe]<p>More discussion: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39822577">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39822577</a>

On one hand: social media preys on people of all ages to collect precious data points, know your habits, sell your profile to advertisers which then is used to deliver “targeted ads”. The algorithm then picks up on your habits, and recommends shit you would interact with. The more you interact with “x” content, the more the algorithm tests you with related content or worse (ie, anti abortion ads, aLpHa MaLe content, “own the libz”, “let’s Go BrAnDoN”). Echo chambers formed. The country becomes further divided. Adversaries of the US inch closer to disrupting a “super power” as the country implodes from within (it nearly happened on January 6th, 2021).<p>Social media is like a drug. And should be treated as such. I would kind of support this legislation.<p>BUT, at the same time. Why is the state government mandating this? Where are the parents? Maybe they are also dazed by the drug of social media. ItS jUsT aN aPp, mentality. Yet what they don’t realize is these companies spend billions of dollars to fine tune the algorithm to build profiles on all of their users. Focus grouped to help. Decades of psychology used against the mind of a pre-teen, elderly, or the uneducated. They stand no chance.<p>I’m also concerned at where this stops. First its to protect the children. Then it progresses to full blown censorship of the internet (ie, “Great (fire) Wall of china”). The so called “small government party” is pushing this as well, which is concerning.

Does anyone know where to find the actual law text? Otherwise it&#x27;s hard to assess, what this really means.

isn&#x27;t this misguided? good regulation would go after why sites are designed to be addictive &#x2F; target children - targeted ads.

Can anyone not from the US explain how we can work with the data from social media? These are the questions we need to address:<p>1. How can we identify if the user is based in Florida? 2. How can we determine their age? 3. How can we map the parent-child relationship here? 4. What will happen if the account was created in Argentina during traveling?

It’s a start! Hope this gets studied before it gets shut down.

I feel that more than anything this is a subsidy for all of Desantis&#x27;s lawyer friends - paid for by residents of Florida. While Florida was an odd state when I moved here 40 years ago, it has become more surreal at an accelerating pace. I wonder if the simulation has a local glitch.

I hope for them a &quot;social media&quot; is well defined, because it gets blurrier as years pass.

&gt; Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, opposed the legislation, saying it would limit parental discretion and raise data privacy concerns because of the personal information users would have to provide to be age-verified.<p>They can delegate or they can archive and choose not to use this data for anything other than the stated purpose.<p>Are they indirectly saying that they can&#x27;t restrain themselves and that any data they collect for whatever reasons is fair game ?<p>I guess their problem is if someone submits identifying data willingly they will not be able to use it for other purposes without consent and they will look suspicious even when they infer the data&#x2F;connections independently.

I do love the US Right&#x27;s hilariously dishonest obsession with &quot;free speech&quot; and how the rest of the US engages with them as if it is some good faith disagreement.<p>the Right should also be more worried - requiring the construction of this sort of Technological Autocracy Infrastructure should scare them, since presumably they won&#x27;t always be in charge. of course the flip side is that a lot of the leaders are Christian Dominionists who aren&#x27;t worried about that, since they want to end the United States as it currently exists.<p>anyway, cheery! hope everyone agrees that not letting kids see what Rhianna had for lunch or whatever was worth it.

Limiting it for people over 70 would probably do more good

Right, Florida teenagers are totally not going to use social media after this law. It&#x27;s like everyone commenting on this thread was born yesterday.<p>This is a form of government control on your devices and eyeballs, nothing else. And considering it is effectively impossible to enforce, the state is soon going to start suing all the tech companies they don&#x27;t like and push further restrictions&#x2F;censorship.

This&#x27;ll probably have a Streisand effect by making having a secret social media account the cool kids thing and probably add up even more to the societal pressure to get in social media. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Streisand_effect" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Streisand_effect</a>

Ah! The good old party of small government, individual liberties and free market. Well done sticking to your principals sirs and madams!

My kids are 19 and 22. I saw them go through this at a time when we just didn&#x27;t know. Now, I advise friends with young children: you don&#x27;t want your kids to be the last to get phones, or the first to get phones. But you should be in explicit competition with your fellow parents to be second-to-last. Sort of a Dutch auction situation.

Is there a canonical decision of SCOTUS that children don&#x27;t have First Amendment rights, and therefore it&#x27;s OK to restrict their ability to post?<p>(note that rules which require proof of age tend also to turn into rules that end anonymity, because it&#x27;s more work to separate the proof systems)<p>Edit: I ask a question about caselaw and end up at -3? Yes, I know, don&#x27;t complain about downvotes, but I don&#x27;t understand these at all.

Sounds like Mastodon and other ActivityPub enabled services are about to be flooded with Floridian teenagers?

This won&#x27;t work, 99.9% of parents will just consent. Also, they&#x27;ll just find another way around it or like I&#x27;ve already seen where they have large imessage groups going.

Well, I&#x27;ll throw one my customer&#x27;s ideas out there. &quot;Only validate their age <i>if</i> they&#x27;re under 16.&quot;<p>Originally, &quot;Only require a middle name when they have one.&quot;

What&#x27;s the definition of social media in this case?

There&#x27;s no doubt in my mind that this would be healthier for everyone if it panned out. Whether it is legal or enforceable remains to be seen.

At least it’ll encourage the kids to learn a little about computers while they scramble to get around this issue

Would HN be &quot;social media&quot; under this law?

I find it disturbing that both political parties seem to be goose-stepping towards Authoritarianism albeit for different Ideological reasons.

if we really wanna get the kids off social media, we need to bring back thrid places. kids need places where they can meet in person. we dismantled those and the kids went to social media to meet each other.<p>getting rid of social media without letting them hang out in person is just goin to create an epidemic of social lonliness

a good step forward<p>but i think it would be both better and easier to make it illegal for &lt; 16 yo&#x27;s to have a smart phone<p>the reason being that you can assume that&#x27;s how they&#x27;re using social media, so its a pretty good way to stop it, and this doesn&#x27;t require annoying age or identity verification mechanisms for everyone else

The year of the Lemmy off-shore instances!

To me this has the flavor of adding ratings for a video game or movie, or having porn sites ask if you&#x27;re over 18 before letting you in. I guess possibly it will do some good (assuming that the implementation isn&#x27;t crap, which is a stretch), but overall seems like a probable nothingburger in terms of actually being good for young adults&#x27; mental well-being. Evidence for the negative impacts of social media on young adults is thin AFAIK, so ultimately seems more like an attempt to cash in on the social-media&#x2F;trans rights moral panic that DeSantis has built his political brand around.<p>I do wonder why the bill seeks to restrict users&#x27; freedoms, rather than making it illegal to advertise to children in general or something (as many other countries besides the US did decades ago to target children&#x27;s television). I don&#x27;t want to impute too much into DeSantis&#x27; motivations without evidence, but from where I&#x27;m standing it certainly seems like the difference is the model of harm. If your model is: &quot;advertising to children is profitable, so social media will do shady things to keep them engaged to shill them crap&quot; then banning ads makes sense, whereas if it&#x27;s: &quot;children go on social media&#x2F;the internet[0], meet new people, and learn that they may be gender non-conforming in some way&quot; then dramatically curtailing their access to the internet seems more effective.<p>[0] Given the dominance of social media platforms these terms seems basically interchangeable in this context, IMO.

If we could do the same for people 16 and over, the world would be a better place.

I like this. We&#x27;ll get another generation of anti-authoritarian hackers. These kids will learn to circumvent the laws, and the process will improve both their skills and their philosophy.

I agree with Meta that this should be implemented at an app store level

Talk about big government encroaching on personal liberties!

Suddenly everyone&#x27;s birthday: 1&#x2F;1&#x2F;1111

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.

&gt;kids getting brain less damaged by shorts and tiktoks<p>We are so back<p>&gt;id required for more stuff<p>It&#x27;s so over

tHe PaRtY of LImIteD goVerNmEnT

Good. Fuck social media.

I wonder if kids on social media is going to be looked at in a hundred years like we look at kids smoking cigarettes from 100 years ago.

Solution for teens wanting to be in social media: move to a better state lol

This may be one of the rare instances where regulation is not a bad thing.<p>Social media, especially the recent evolution with shorts, reels and tik-tok, are destroying young minds (and older too).<p>I&#x27;m pretty sure there are millions of people who try to limit their consumption of social media, without any luck - it&#x27;s just too addictive. If one was able to make a decision - to completely ban for example tik-tok (like make it disappear forever) my feeling is that many people would decide yes. As this is obviously not possible, we all struggle with the overall negative impact.

The law is going to be shot down quickly if it is an undue burden on adults getting access to social media websites and apps.