0:00

Over the last couple years especially it

0:02

seems like a lot of people and

0:04

a lot of the public has really noticed

0:07

that governments are noticing

0:09

and really taking inventory

0:12

of their online activity and conversations

0:14

and using legislation to solve some

0:16

of the issues with this. Recently

0:19

in Florida that's the latest state to try

0:21

to solve what a lot

0:23

of people have concerns about. Miners accessing

0:26

social media, kids under 14 years old

0:29

and this is what it looked like in the news. Check it out. Okay. Social

0:31

media showdown in Florida. It is

0:34

being called one of the most

0:36

restrictive social media bans in the

0:38

country. Governor Ron DeSantis has signed

0:40

House Bill 3 into law banning

0:42

children under 14 from having social

0:44

media accounts on platforms considered to

0:47

have addictive qualities. It

0:49

also mandates that social media platforms search

0:51

for and remove the profiles of kids

0:53

who don't meet the age requirement. Being

0:55

buried in those devices all day is

0:57

not the best way to to grow

0:59

up and you know there's dangers out

1:01

there. Unfortunately we've got predators who prey

1:03

on young kids. They know how to

1:05

get and manipulate these different

1:08

platforms. It's created huge problems. This

1:10

law does not ban specific websites.

1:12

Instead it zeros in on features

1:14

that are considered addictive like infinite

1:16

scrolling and autoplay videos. What is

1:18

still unclear though is just where

1:21

this law stands. The trade

1:23

group Net Choice which represents several major

1:25

social media giants slammed the move as

1:27

unconstitutional saying it violates the First Amendment,

1:29

the equal protection clause of the 14th

1:31

Amendment and federal law. It's completely stripping

1:34

away parental choice for anybody who has

1:36

a child under 14. Proponents

1:38

have argued that access to social

1:40

media is harmful to children's mental

1:43

health. There's no bill powerful enough

1:45

to keep these kids from social

1:47

media. It's not possible. This

1:53

is another one of those Jeffrey we were just

1:55

talking about TikTok last week right like the sort

1:57

of Chinese influence a law being written to you

2:00

know, take TikTok away, but this

2:02

is different. This isn't, you know, Ron

2:04

DeSantis in Florida doesn't seem to care

2:07

who's behind making the app. This is

2:09

just straight up about the

2:12

danger to youth and we have sort

2:14

of, you know, shall I

2:16

say the mommy state? I mean, I

2:18

find this interesting because so often conservatives

2:20

call where the government steps in to

2:23

take care of like household issues as,

2:25

you know, being the nanny or mommy

2:27

state. But in this one,

2:29

it's, it's, it's, it bowls it right down the middle,

2:31

but it's about the kids' health. So tell me what this

2:33

is about. Yeah, it's certainly an

2:35

interesting conversation. So Utah was the first state to

2:37

really step into this space in 2023. This

2:40

was the headline here when they did that.

2:42

Utah governor signs laws curbing social media use

2:44

for minors. You go into that and basically

2:46

the laws required all users to submit age

2:48

verification before opening an account. And for those

2:50

laws, it was minors under age 18. They

2:53

need to seek parental permission for this.

2:55

So right now we have Arkansas, Ohio,

2:57

Utah, and now Florida. They've banned

2:59

minors from accessing

3:02

these accounts on social media. But you

3:04

saw their net choice, the trade organization,

3:06

that clip there that represents organizations

3:08

like Meta. They're part of that.

3:11

Google, Yahoo. They have sued and

3:13

won injunctions in Arkansas and Ohio.

3:15

So it stayed those laws. They're

3:18

expecting, Florida is expecting a legal fight really fast

3:20

on this one, but it doesn't go into effect

3:23

until January 2025 in Florida. That's

3:25

Hb3. So it's got a

3:27

ways to go yet. But as it said in

3:29

the clip there, the news reporting, all

3:32

kids under 14, these social media companies

3:34

have to immediately eliminate their accounts. So

3:36

they don't even get a choice there.

3:40

14 and 15 year olds, they need parental

3:42

consent for that. And if anybody asks for

3:44

that to take be taken down, if the

3:46

parents or the kids ask for these accounts

3:48

to be shut down, if the companies don't

3:51

act, they can actually be sued personally by

3:53

these kids. Well, talking about some pretty happy

3:55

fines. So I think what's interesting

3:57

in this conversation, because you and I, we

3:59

cover. a lot of medical choice

4:01

conversations, one of them is the

4:03

minor consent to vaccination, often without

4:05

parental choice. We've seen a rush

4:08

of legislators over the last several

4:10

years gleefully trying to push

4:12

these bills, saying this would help public health.

4:14

But when you start reading into this

4:16

conversation about minors in social media, we

4:18

see something like this. This

4:21

is an associated post reporting on DeSantis's law

4:23

here. And you go into the post and

4:25

it says, quote, this bill goes too far

4:28

in taking away parents' rights, Democratic Rep.

4:30

Anna Eskamani said in a news release.

4:32

So you have this dichotomy of

4:35

a little bit, almost hypocrisy if you

4:37

want to call it that, like a

4:39

shot with no side effects, no liability,

4:41

all the things we've covered on the

4:43

show before. That's fine. But

4:46

a TikTok video streaming account,

4:48

we've pumped the brakes. We really need

4:51

to give these kids and the parents the power here. Yeah,

4:54

I mean, it really, but,

4:58

you know, I think you're making the argument that I

5:00

suppose that we, you know, I'm trying to think where

5:02

I actually land on this, but you're right. Does

5:04

a child have the ability to decide

5:07

for themselves what's good for them? You

5:09

know, and I think about, you know,

5:11

sure, we want strong parenting in homes,

5:13

parents should be making decisions. But how

5:16

many families where both parents were maybe

5:18

single family homes are, you

5:20

know, out at work or coming home late

5:22

and the child, you know, is with a

5:24

babysitter or child is maybe even at home

5:26

or, you know, how many times? I

5:28

guess here's the question, right? If I want, if

5:30

I'm with them and I'm having a conversation with

5:33

an adult, which we all do, you know, at

5:35

a restaurant, I just want to hand the iPad

5:37

over and say, check out some social media. Do

5:40

I not? I guess in this case, in

5:42

some of these cases, I don't even have

5:45

that right to hand it off to my

5:47

kid and say, here, go ahead and do

5:49

this. So this is where, like, again, it's

5:51

these slippery slopes. We look at our our

5:54

rights. Right. And, you know, as they

5:56

say, the camel's nose under the tent. We really

5:58

want government involved in these conversations. And it's

6:00

an open question at this point. It seems

6:02

like it's going forward, so we're reporting on

6:04

it. But this conversation really started to unravel

6:07

during COVID. And a lot of people missed

6:09

it in the headlines. But there was some

6:11

whistleblowers. There were some internal documents from Meta,

6:13

formerly known as Facebook, that were released to

6:15

the Wall Street Journal. And they

6:17

actually did an expose, several articles on this. Here's

6:19

one of them in 2021. Facebook knows

6:22

Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company

6:24

documents show. And you go in here,

6:26

and it talks about this. Meta actually

6:29

commissioned several studies and presented these results

6:31

internally to the company. It

6:33

says, 32% of teen girls said that when

6:35

they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made

6:37

them feel worse. The researchers said in a

6:39

March 2020 slide presentation posted

6:41

to Facebook's internal message board, we

6:43

make body image issues worse for

6:45

one in three girls, said one

6:47

slide in 2019, summarizing research about teen

6:50

girls who experienced the issues. Goes on

6:52

to say that if teens blame Instagram

6:54

for increases in the rate of anxiety

6:56

and depression, said another slide,

6:58

this reaction was unprompted and consistent across all

7:00

groups. That's a big problem for them. But

7:02

here's an even bigger problem. Among teens who

7:04

reported suicidal thoughts, 13% of British users and

7:06

6% of American users trace

7:10

the desire to kill themselves to

7:12

Instagram one presentation show. And

7:15

so in summary, this is the issue

7:17

they deal with, because they had a lot,

7:19

the reason they're doing this is because they're

7:22

losing a lot of people signing up

7:24

for Facebook. They're calling them aging out.

7:27

So they're going out to the younger crowd

7:29

and they're saying, well, can we really do

7:31

this? And it says, social comparison is worse

7:33

on Instagram. This is the problem they had.

7:35

States Facebook deep dive into teen girl body

7:38

image issues in 2020, noting

7:40

that TikTok, a short video app

7:42

is grounded in performance, while users

7:44

on Snapchat, Arrival Photo and video

7:46

sharing app are sheltered by jokey

7:48

filters that keep the focus on

7:50

the face. In contrast, Instagram focuses

7:52

heavily on the body and lifestyle. So that's

7:54

where you're getting what they're saying as a

7:56

lot of these mental health issues and these

7:58

affairs issues. These were internal memos

8:01

where they all sat around, said, I don't

8:03

know, what do you think? We're driving one

8:05

in three girls into anxiety and

8:07

depression and roughly 6% of Americans

8:10

and 13% of

8:13

girls in England are blaming

8:16

their suicidal thoughts on our progress. So we

8:18

go forward with it. Should we continue to

8:20

push forward and promote it to these children?

8:24

All in favor, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye,

8:26

aye, aye, aye, aye,

9:28

aye, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye,

9:30

aye, aye, aye, aye. Com

9:35

steer the aye,

9:43

aye, aye, aye, aye. Meta

10:00

received over 402,000 reports of under

10:02

13 users on Instagram, but that

10:04

164,000, far fewer

10:07

than half of the reported accounts were, quote,

10:09

disabled for potentially being under the age of

10:11

13 that year. The

10:14

complaint noted that at times, Meta

10:16

had a backlog of up to

10:18

2.5 million accounts of younger children

10:20

awaiting action. So they

10:23

can use that excuse in saying, well,

10:25

we have all these users and we

10:28

have a little bit of a backlog, so we're just going to keep

10:30

them on for now. So it obviously

10:32

works in their favor according to the

10:34

lawsuit. But the challenge they have, and

10:36

this goes on in this article to

10:38

kind of explain this just to give

10:40

voice to the other side. It says,

10:43

with respect to barring younger users from

10:45

the service, Meta argued age verification is

10:47

a, quote, complex industrial challenge. Instead, Meta

10:49

said it favors shifting the burden of

10:51

policing underage usage to app stores and

10:53

parents like Google and Apple, specifically by

10:56

supporting federal legislation that would require app

10:58

stores to obtain parental approval whenever use

11:00

under 16 download the app. So they're

11:02

saying it's a complex industry challenge, age

11:04

verification. However, looking

11:07

at this, this conversation has a lot

11:09

of tails on it. So just putting

11:11

this other angle on this here, there's

11:13

another conversation going on here. It's

11:16

represented in this headline. Kansas moves to

11:18

join Texas and other states are requiring

11:20

porn sites to verify people's ages. So

11:22

age verification is going on. And

11:25

so Louisiana was the prime mover in this

11:27

space with this law taking effect at the

11:29

start of this year. But we

11:31

have about eight other states that are

11:33

going this direction as well for age

11:35

verification. And of those states,

11:37

I mean, most of them, seven of

11:40

the eight are Republican states. And

11:42

there's 20 other states that are looking into

11:44

introducing legislation here. But a lot of the

11:46

big companies are just cutting access completely off

11:48

in these states because they don't even want

11:50

to try to comply with the law because

11:52

of the penalties here of trying to get

11:54

age verification. Because if any kid is signed

11:56

onto that and is found out, they're talking

11:58

every day they're fine. tens of thousands of

12:01

dollars. So a lot of these companies are just going,

12:03

we're done in Texas, we're done in

12:05

Kansas. You know,

12:08

this is such an interesting topic. And as

12:10

we were discussing it earlier before the show,

12:12

it's one of those that I'd be really

12:14

curious for people, especially in our audience land,

12:16

but we put up a Twitter poll just

12:19

a couple of hours ago this morning. And

12:21

we asked this, in your opinion, does

12:23

the First Amendment protect a minor's right

12:25

to all content content

12:27

on the internet? Yes or

12:30

no. Right now, 85% of those,

12:32

I guess we have almost 1,400 votes, 85%

12:36

are saying that the First Amendment does not

12:38

protect a minor's rights. I would love it

12:40

if everyone in the audience would weigh in

12:42

right now on Twitter at

12:44

Highwire Talk and please share it. I

12:47

mean, I'm curious. What

12:49

does it look like when just our audience is weighing in

12:51

over the next hour or so? But then what does it

12:53

look like if you share it with all your friends? Does

12:56

it change? Are we all in

12:58

this together? Do we believe that a parent

13:00

really is in a position to be deciding

13:02

what is right for their children? If so,

13:04

does that mean that that child doesn't have

13:06

their own First Amendment rights? Certainly a

13:09

very important question as we move forward

13:12

in this modern world. So if

13:14

you want to get involved, go to Twitter right

13:16

now at Highwire Talk. I'd love to see your

13:18

perspective on that. We're going to do a lot

13:21

more of this. I want to start interacting with

13:23

you out there in the audience to see what

13:25

does our audience actually think about some of these

13:27

conversations that we're having. Super interesting, Jeffrey. Another one

13:29

is that, sort of bowls

13:31

down the middle. It fights both spaces, right? Do

13:33

we want the government getting involved in our lives

13:36

and protecting us inside of our houses or

13:38

not? Is it black and white? It seems more

13:41

and more I'm finding myself in a gray area,

13:43

which isn't very comfortable for me.