Florida is on the verge of passing one of the nation’s most restrictive bans on minors’ use of social media after the state Senate passed a bill Thursday that would keep children under the age of 16 off popular platforms regardless of parental approval.
The measure now goes back to the state House, where the speaker has made the issue his top priority during the legislative session that ends March 8. Still, critics have pointed to similar efforts in other states that have been blocked by courts.
The bill targets any social media site that tracks user activity, allows children to upload material and interact with others, and uses addictive features designed to cause excessive or compulsive use. Supporters point to rising suicide rates among children, cyberbullying and predators using social media to prey on kids.
As backwards as Florida is on most issues, this is actually just common sense at this point. We have the data that shows that exposure to social media, in all its “look at how awesome my life is!” shittiness, is detrimental to a child’s social and psychological development. There’s almost an entire generation of kids that have zero attention span, porn addictions, and depression from engaging in a completely untested and cutting edge form of communication that is way too open to bad actors and predators to exploit.
edit: I’m not making any comments about Florida’s desire to control the flow of information, because at this point it’s just conjecture.
That’s more the internet in general. Us millennials were also pretty fucked up by internet porn and the availability of short form media.
I remember my parents talking about how we have no attention span because of things like YouTube and our cartoons. Same shit different generation.
Also just like we did they’ll find a way to use it anyway.