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Our state’s political leaders seem determined to pass laws that violate the U.S. Constitution; what I’m not sure of is whether they’re being guided by pure intentions or the need to score political points.
I’m speaking of the crusade to protect children from the ills of social media.
While I have concerns about the willingness to flagrantly violate the First Amendment and waste untold sums of taxpayer dollars, my greatest qualm lies with the fundamental misunderstanding of the best way to protect children.
This began in 2023 with the Arkansas Legislature’s passage of the Social Media Safety Act, a law that required companies like Facebook and TikTok to verify new users’ ages and obtain parental consent for new minor users. The law never took effect and has been permanently struck down by a federal judge. (Legislators were told, repeatedly, this would happen.)
State lawmakers followed up that losing effort with a pair of laws passed earlier this year to restrict content related to substance abuse, mental illness and eating disorders as well as give legal recourse to the families of children who died by suicide after being exposed to content online that promoted self-harm.
I have a personal policy against predicting the outcome of litigation, but based on the previous lawsuit and similar suits in other states, I suspect the latest laws will be struck down due to their vagueness and on constitutional grounds.
One of the new laws, for example, would require social media companies to ensure their platform “does not engage in practices to evoke any addiction or compulsive behavior.” How many times can a teen check Instagram before it becomes “compulsive”? As the lawsuit asks, are songs like Afroman’s “Because I Got High” prohibited?
Social media is full of negative effects, and I think those effects are clear in many of those in our youngest generation. Fostering healthier relationships with social media is a laudable goal, but every problem doesn’t call for more government.
In this case, a government-driven solution actually ignores and absolves parents and guardians, who are the first line of defense against problematic content online.
Most children can’t access social media without devices and internet connections paid for by their parents. Parents already have numerous tools at their disposal: built-in parental controls, third-party monitoring software and the simple power of rules and consequences.
Instead of letting government play big brother, we’d be better off empowering parents and children with better digital literacy — something state government could help with without stomping all over the Bill of Rights.
I worry that these efforts aren’t as much about protecting kids as they are about making a political point. It’s the latest example of something that has become too common: governance by gesture rather than substance.
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