On July 12th,, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen issued a statement calling for a European Union (EU) wide identity verification system for all social media users. Like many infringements on liberty and privacy, the proposal to force EU residents to verify their identity is being implemented in order to protect the children. The mandatory verification system is necessary to enforce, “age-appropriate restrictions to platforms.”
According to President von der Leyen, “while ultimately it is up to parents to decide when children get their first smartphones, what we already have is a consensus that there needs to be a start date for the age children can join social media." So, European parents should be able to decide when their child is old enough to have a smartphone, but not to determine when their child is old enough to use that phone to keep in touch with their friends, as well as make new friends from around the world, as well as share, receive and make videos on social media. President von der Leyen’s claim that government should impose a uniform date for when children are ready for social media implicitly assumes that all children develop at the same rate. Of course, this is nonsense.
Some children may develop the emotional and mental maturity to handle at least limited exposure to social media at a young age, while others may need to wait until they are older. This is why the decision of when a child is ready for social media should be left to those who best know them: their parents. Respecting parents’ rights to determine when their children are ready for social media allows the parents to monitor their child’s online activities and teach them how to benefit from social media while avoiding its pitfalls while the child is still at an age when they are likely to listen to and follow parental counsel. Simply forbidding children from using social media until they reach a certain age increases the odds that they will not learn how to avoid the predators, scammers, and trolls that lurk online.
The second problem with President von der Leyen’s government-imposed minimum age limits for social media is that these restrictions have been proven ineffective. Australia recently implemented a social media ban for all Australians under 16. According to a survey published by Australia’s safety commission, approximately 70% of Australia’s teenagers who had social media accounts before the ban was implemented still had them months after the ban went into effect.
Age verification mandates force all online users to divulge their identities in order to access the internet. This makes it easier for government to track and potentially control the online actions of any citizen of any age.
The EU is not the only government considering ending online privacy in order to protect the children. In June, the House of Representatives passed the Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act. The legislation requires social media companies to implement a variety of protections and controls for users which they “knew or should have known” were minors. Although the bill says, “nothing in [the bill] may be construed to require the provider of a covered platform to implement an age gating or age verification functionality on the covered platform," the fear of being held liable under the should-have-known standard will lead websites to collect (and store) personally-identifying information such as driver’s licenses and passports for all their users.
The bill also requires social media sites to implement content moderation policies that could block a minor user’s ability to access information which they have a First Amendment right to receive. Verification, as well as laws forbidding minors from accessing social media, may be well-intentioned efforts to protect children. However, they also also usurp the rights of parents to control their children’s social media use, violate the rights of adult social media users, and are ineffective at stopping minors from accessing social media. These laws are also unnecessary, as there are already tools available to help parents control their children’s social media use. If politicians and bureaucrats are fired up to do something to protect children from the pitfalls of social media, they should conduct public education campaigns to ensure parents know about these tools, instead of trying to legislate access to the internet.
