In the cover story for our new issue, Christine Rosen takes up a question we’ve neglected to ask: Why do we let children use social media?
Other countries have stricter rules. In Germany, Ireland, and Switzerland, for example, the age of digital consent is set at 16, with more legal requirements in place for age verification. Massachusetts senator Ed Markey, one of the original sponsors of COPPA [the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act], wanted to set the U.S. age at 16 but was thwarted by lobbying both from technology companies concerned about profits and from civil-liberties groups that, according to a Wall Street Journal story about COPPA, feared that “requiring teens to obtain parental permission might curtail their ability to access information about birth control and abortion.” Of the age-13 compromise, Markey said, “It was too young and I knew it was too young then. It was the best I could do.”
Parents are supposed to monitor and regulate their children’s social-media use. Parental responsibility is, of course, essential. But it’s not a substitute for a legal regime that supports parents. Rosen continues:
For many parents, even those who place limits on their children’s use of platforms and devices, the problem of social media is no longer a private one. Social media drive political and cultural and educational conversations to such a degree that a collective solution to the problem they pose for children is long overdue. We have enough evidence of the harms and dangers of social-media use by children, as well as plenty of examples of the lack of concern demonstrated by the companies profiting from children’s use of the platforms, to acknowledge that the “best we could do” 20 years ago at the dawn of the social-media era is no longer good enough.
She goes on to consider the possible objections to a ban on social media for minors, and offers answers to them. I suspect that this debate is just getting started.
Also in the issue, Andy McCarthy writes about what special counsel John Durham got wrong: The FBI wasn’t the Clinton campaign’s victim in Russiagate; it was its collaborator. Mario Loyola wonders what the U.S. endgame in the war over Ukraine is — if there is one. Marvin Olasky draws on his experiences as the longtime editor of World to look at whether “political passion is consuming American evangelicalism.” David Pryce-Jones writes about the new (!) Céline. Madeleine Kearns observes Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee. And Ross Douthat reviews Top Gun: Maverick.
We’ve also got Michael Brendan Dougherty, Allen Guelzo, A. M. Juster, Rob Long — and more.
You can read the June 27, 2022, issue of NR here.