Difficult issues under First Amendment.

and I don't see there's a constitutional problem with restricting rights of children that adults have; instead it's a question of what society wants.

It is destroying the mental health of children. I've seen the results in real time with my own eyes with my nieces and nephews, classmates in college, and children I work with.

We've done our experiment - let children have unfettered access to technology and social feedback systems their developing brains are in no way prepared to cope with. It has gone as shittily as possible. We restrict movies based on content. We should be doing this, too.

Hell, I don't think adults are managing it well. Bunch of brain-rotted lunatics everywhere now. But there's nothing one can do about that.

I doubt Trump would ever have been elected. And, a bunch of other political reprobates...

but listening to young people themselves and the worst cases involve suicide I think there needs to be some control.

And seeing my brother and SIL struggle to balance letting them do what all of their friends are doing while still trying to keep a strict enough eye on things to be aware. It was proving impossible for them.

When you're sitting at a dinner table watching your brother and his wife watch their daughter, because they need to make sure she's eating, because she spends all day looking at Instagram models and influencers, it's quietly heartbreaking.

When I grew up in the 90s, we were already having a conversation about what impossible standards in media and magazines were doing to young girls' self-image and self-esteem.

Now we just let them stream that heavily-filtered mess directly into their eyeballs 24/7, and it's like "Their mental health got worse? How did that happen?!"

Now mix in that people can bully online with anonymous impunity.

I am so glad I was grown adult by the time social media kicked in. I can dip in and dip out at will, and it has no effect whatsoever on my family, social, or professional life. There is no Twitter history from when I was a teenager that's going to get me fired from a future job.

We used to joke growing up about how various benign infractions would go "on your permanent record."

Welp, now kids actually have one online. That's a terrifying thought to me.

Social media has become a cesspool of lies, deception and exploitation, especially of kids. As usual, something with great potential for social interaction and education has degenerated into the "vast wasteland" that a former commissioner of the US FCC (Newton Minnow?) once described television.

Hard to know however how effectively it will be enforced - I would guess not very well.

is probably easily bypassed by toddlers.

And I'd argue some restrictions are appropriate for younger kids. NBut not a fan of the gubmint telling me what I permit for my kid. Require parental consent? Fine. Bans? Bad idea IMO.

EA Sports (now Saudi owned) and others thrive on hooking children to gambling.

They're still putting the finishing touches on it, but once it passes, the results should be an item of interest here in the U.S.

The concern, of course, is that our corporations' lobbying powers are too great to ever let something like that pass in Congress.

Which sounds about right for us.

I will never support a ban like that here in the US