Social Pressure

While admitting that “law is a blunt instrument for solving complicated social problems,” Christine Rosen (“Keep Them Offline,” June 27) nonetheless downplays the radicalness of her proposal to make all teenagers criminals for accessing the primary media platforms of their generation. She wants us to believe that allowing teens to use social media is the equivalent of letting them operate a vehicle, smoke tobacco, or drink alcohol. This is false equivalence. Being on a social-media site is not the same as operating two tons of steel and glass at speed or using mind-altering substances.

Teens certainly face challenges and risks in any new media environment, but to believe that complex social pathologies did not exist before the Internet is folly. Echoing the same “lost generation” claims made by past critics who panicked over comic books and video games, Rosen asks, “Can we afford to lose another generation of children?” and suggests that only sweeping nanny-state controls can save the day. This cycle is apparently endless: Those “lost generations” grow up fine, only to claim it’s the next generation that is doomed!

Rosen casually dismisses free-speech concerns associated with mass-media criminalization, saying that her plan “would not require censorship.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Rosen’s prohibitionist proposal would deny teens the many routine and mostly beneficial interactions they have with their peers online every day. While she belittles media literacy and other educational and empowerment-based solutions to online problems, those approaches continue to be a better response than the repressive regulatory regime she would have Big Government impose on society.

Adam Thierer

Senior Research Fellow

Mercatus Center at George Mason University

Christine Rosen responds: Mr. Thierer’s letter is an exercise in hyperbole. Nowhere did I suggest that complex social pathologies were created by Internet use; but it is folly to argue, as Mr. Thierer does, that TikTok and Instagram are akin to comic books. Comic books don’t track your behavior when you read them; comic books don’t sell your browsing habits to advertisers in real time; comic books don’t connect you in real time to other people who might threaten you.

Social-media platforms are a powerful tool, like a car, that, when used responsibly by individuals developmentally able to handle the challenges of doing so, can bring benefits. But as a society, we come to agreement on protections for children that we would never impose on adults, including restrictions on activities that are developmentally appropriate for them. To suggest, as Mr. Thierer does, that limiting social-media-platform use by children would also limit their ability to use the Internet for educational and social purposes is ridiculous. Indeed, a ban on children’s use of social-media sites that were designed for adults could encourage the creation of other platforms with built-in protections for children.

If Mr. Thierer is so certain that these platforms are safe for young children, he should ask the companies profiting from them why they refuse to share their data with researchers or policy-makers to prove this supposed safety.

Supporting free markets doesn’t mean one must support a free-for-all when it comes to what is best for children. Mr. Thierer thinks this is panicking. I call it a core tenet of conservatism: With freedom comes responsibility, including responsibility for the most vulnerable members of society.