Alex Ambrose

The U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy published a New York Times op-ed arguing that social media poses such a threat to children’s mental health that these platforms should come with a warning label like cigarettes and alcohol. However, his argument is flawed on multiple levels: There is no scientific consensus that social media is causing mental health issues among youth; social media use among youth does not present a similar level of risk as tobacco and alcohol use; and the alleged risks of social media come from interaction with specific types of content, not from the platforms themselves.

Age-appropriate design codes come from a noble place—the desire to protect children—but have serious flaws and threaten to do more harm than good. Instead of ID-based age verification, Congress should require device makers and platforms hosting age-restricted content to establish a “child flag” system—so everyone is assumed to be an adult unless they are marked as a child.

Given that more than 19 states are in the process of implementing digital IDs, Oklahoma serves as a cautionary tale on the importance of building accessibility into the system from the beginning.

Though the ways consumers access entertainment have changed, the laws protecting children in the space have not. The time is ripe to update laws to better reflect the changing media landscape by expanding coverage to protect child social media influencers (“kidfluencers”).

Join the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) and the XR Association for the fourth annual AR/VR Policy Conference.