On one hand preventing kids from developing a social media addiciton is good. On the other this law will probably cause a lot of issues. Some issues that i can think of on the spot are:

1. How exactly do you verify age. Kids can just lie about it and social media platforms requiring a national ID is a stupidly bad idea just from the privacy concerns. I don’t want every website to have my ID because:

   A. This would make tracking people between platforms much easier.

   B. One data leak from one website and milions of people have their govt IDs available on-line along with names, phone numbers, e-mail addreses and possibly even addresses (from billing information) and answers to security questions (from posts)

2. I’m worried that this will cause a lot of social media platforms to go the way that youtube went, ie. no NSFW, swearing or anything even remotly not kid-friendly.

But on the other hand they get a free shotgun with their first credit card debt /s

realistically it’s going to be impossible to implement this. not even taking the das into account that most of the people making these decisions have absolutely no clue

Conservatives love their nanny state

This is so stupid. If we are going to regulate social media companies it needs to be done at the national level. I’d say their age should be voluntary and if it’s a minor then yeah the algorithms should be cognizant of that. But that needs to be a national bill.

I do hope that these social media companies respond by just shutting down in these states. Even as someone who is unfortunate enough to live in Texas.

Hopefully they use their ridiculous amount of power to show Texas legislators who is actually in charge.