The Daily - A Sweeping Plan to Protect Kids From Social Media

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

A few days ago, Utah became the first state to pass a law prohibiting social media services from allowing users under 18 to have accounts without the explicit consent of a parent or guardian. The move, by Republican officials, is intended to address what they describe as a mental health crisis among American teenagers as well as to protect younger users from bullying and child sexual exploitation.The technology reporter Natasha Singer explains the measure, and why it could be a sign of where the country is headed.Guest: Natasha Singer, who writes about technology, business and society for The New York Times.Background reading: The Utah law prohibits social networks from allowing minors to have accounts without parental consent.The creator of Fortnite was found by federal regulators to have violated children’s privacy and duped millions of users into unwanted purchases.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. A few days ago, Republican officials in Utah went further than any other state to protect children from the risks of social media. My colleague, Natasha Singer, says that despite the unusualness of what Utah did, it may be a sign of where the entire country is headed. It's Monday, March 27th.

Natasha, tell us about what happened late last week in Utah. Last Thursday in Utah at 3 o'clock in the afternoon local time. Ladies and gentlemen, it is an honor to have all of you here today. The governor held a ceremonial event in which he signed into law a package of bills that will fundamentally change how children and teens in Utah use social media. These are first of their kind bills in the United States. These laws are designed to make kids safer online, but they go further than any other laws in the land. That's huge that Utah is leading out on this effort.

And what he was doing was he had timed the event to a hearing in Congress on the fate of TikTok. And it was as if the governor of Utah was saying to Congress, you folks, while you're blathering away about the harms of TikTok, here in Utah, we're actually going to do something about it. And any legislators that are here can come up, any advocacy groups. We're taking action while you folks are having a hearing. Right. He stood there and said, I am making some history here. Exactly. Other states may have similar laws, but this one is the most restrictive. Okay. So what exactly does this law actually do?

Well, the first thing it does is it prohibits social media companies from allowing people under 18 to have an account unless they have the explicit permission of parents. And that is going to affect people under 18 on a whole bunch of services, whether it's Instagram or TikTok or Twitter. Right. In effect, it kind of is a default to no access unless a parent opts their child in. Yes. It's going to cut off young people in Utah from a large swath of the internet, unless their parents account by account, social media service by social media service approve. Got it. Okay. What else does it do? The second thing it does is it gives parents access to their child's accounts. So that means what the students posted, videos, messages they sent, messages they received from other people,

videos, messages they sent, messages they received from other people, what they searched for. So even if a parent opts their child into social media under this law, that parent would still have access to their child's direct messages, list of followers, pictures that are posted, pictures that are sent privately through direct messages. Basically, any social media activity would have to be made available to a parent. Correct. The intimate messages they send to their friends, the jokey pictures, maybe they went somewhere their parents didn't know. Everything will be available to parents. And it's like a law mandating that parents should have access to their kids' diaries. Right. Which, as we know, are buried under mattresses for a reason,

because parents aren't supposed to see them. Exactly. So we're talking about how this law could change young people's relationship to the Internet, but it could also change the dynamics between parents and children. Right. And the third major thing this law does is it will require social media networks to block access for minors in Utah to their accounts overnight, unless their parents change the setting. Mm-hmm. During the hours when, presumably,

you're supposed to be sleeping. Exactly. So, Natasha, this is very clearly and by far the strictest and most significant effort in the country to rein in the use of social media by minors. And it's not a secret that parents have been craving a way to limit their kids' access to these kinds of platforms. But what case did lawmakers in Utah make for such an expansive

and sweeping set of restrictions that you just described? expansive and sweeping set of restrictions that you just described. The people who wrote this law are people who, like many parents across the country, are concerned that social media increases the risk of depression, anxiety, insomnia, the risk of cyberbullying, the risk of predation by strangers. The risk of cyberbullying, the risk of predation by strangers. And I think that there's another thing that concerned them, which is not have the power to resist some of these powerful attention hijacking techniques. Right. I mean, we barely have the power to resist the attention hijacking qualities of these platforms. You know, I spoke to Michael McKell, who is the Utah senator who was the sponsor of this law. And he said he was really, really concerned about a mental health crisis among youth in the United States.

And he's a parent of two daughters. control that said that there was high amount of depression, particularly among younger girls, and suicidal thoughts in high numbers, higher among young women than men. And he feels that social media is playing a role in exacerbating this. And so he wants to have parents have more involvement in social media to try to mitigate what he sees as the harms. And to be clear, this is not just a theoretical risk. Correct me if I'm wrong, there's a significant body of research that shows linkage between use of social media and some of the conditions we just talked about, anxiety, depression. There are a number of studies that link social media use by adolescents with mental health issues.

And the strongest ones look at what they call problematic use of social media, which is when young people are online for hours and hours on end, and they feel withdrawal when they stop. And those have stronger correlations with mental health issues. Got it. So in that sense, the laws that were just passed and signed into law in Utah, they kind of feel like some version of a parental fantasy come to life, right? The government giving parents the option of essentially walling off these potentially

problematic platforms. So I have to imagine many Utah parents perhaps welcomed these arguments and this law. I think they did. Children are suffering from bullying on social media. The Utah legislature held a hearing in January. There are predators that are preying on them and trying to entice them away. And there were parents who came and testified because they, like many people outside Utah, feel overwhelmed by young people's use of these platforms. We've just gotten to the point where this is a problem that

parents don't have control over anymore. And they have concerns and they don't know how to deal with them. And in a sense, this law is like a parent sitting on the shoulder of the kid. And what about the opposition to this package of laws in Utah? I have to imagine that it was equally intense. The opposition was very intense. The opposition was very intense. The most intense came from tech industry trade groups that are funded by social media and other platforms. They object parents to have access to children's information. They also argued that these companies have developed tools for parents. Instagram has a number of tools that let parents, for example, set time limits for kids.

And TikTok has done things like turned off messages in the middle of the night. And so the tech industry was arguing there are already all these parental controls. And yes, if there is diminished use of social media by 16 and 17-year-olds, that's a very prized advertising demographic. So you can see that there are motivations both because they don't want the bureaucracy, but second of all, they don't want anything chilling their revenue. And then there were child development experts who argued that sometimes the students or children or teens who are most in distress, who are going through emotional issues, identity issues that they can't talk to their parents about, are the ones who most need to find support and community online. And that this might actually hinder them from getting the support they need, especially if they were in a family that was uncomfortable or opposed to their views, or if they were an

abusive family. The child development expert argued that it would be very risky to allow those kind of parents to see their children's social media posts. a similar experience. If a parent who disapproves of that sexual identity is suddenly peering in and under this law allowed to see every conversation, that's not going to be a place where that kid gets to explore that issue, gets to go on any kind of journey with fellow kids. Basically, it's a ruined place for exploration. Basically, it's a ruined place for exploration. And it is one of the last places teens have, right? Because there is a lot of surveillance at school, right? There are apps that see what searches you make.

And so social media for some is the last refuge. My name is Lucy Lowe and I'm 13 and I'm against the spill for a few reasons. And we heard from young people in Utah who spoke about this idea. Minors won't be able to check in with friends who live out of state and family through social media and see what they've been up to lately or talk to them often. There was a 13-year-old girl who talked about how this bill could end up cutting kids off from their peers and making them feel more isolated. And being that this is a bill only getting passed in Utah, Utah teens will feel very disconnected from the world, which as a teenager can feel very frustrating and restricting. It feels like the common thread within this opposition,

which failed because this became law, is not with the intent of the law, which is to make social media less problematic for young people. It's with the tactic, the sheer breadth of this law. And the feeling seems to be that it's just went too far. Absolutely. I think no matter what part of the opposition you were on, they all felt that this law was overly broad. But Utah is only one place, and we've already seen other places that have enacted laws that take a much more targeted approach to the problem. And they offer us a different, more targeted way of regulating this problem and even a different way of conceiving of youth safety online. We'll be right back. So, Natasha, what have these more targeted approaches that you just hinted at looked like so far in trying to deal with social media and kids. networks themselves. And it is a kind of safety and privacy by design approach in which lawmakers

elsewhere are saying to the major tech platforms, you need to change the design of your systems from the ground up to consider the risks to children at every stage. So give us examples of places and laws that do this thing you're describing. I think there are two examples that are important here. One is the United Kingdom, which enacted protections for kids in 2021. It was originally called the Age-Appropriate Design Code, and now it's just called the Children's Code. But the notion is that safety and privacy for folks under 18 need to be baked in to every feature that social media and other platforms that have children and youth on them use.

And that can be anything from, you know, there are these endless content streams that hijack our attention. And one of the arguments in the UK was, well, this endless scroll is really hard to stop, especially if you're a young person. And as this British law was going into effect, YouTube announced, first of all, that all accounts for users aged 13 to 17 would be private by default. So they would not be public. People couldn't see your videos. And second of all, that they were turning off autoplay by default, so they would not be public, people couldn't see your videos. And second of all, that they were turning off autoplay by default for the youngest users. Interesting. And so the UK approach puts the responsibility on the companies to make the designs and the features age appropriate for different ages of young people. Right. The idea here being that laws can make this technology better and safer for kids. It doesn't have to, as you said, take it away entirely. It can tinker and improve.

Yes. I think we've seen that social media companies are reactive when people bring up problems, but these laws, because they require fundamental changes by design, are trying to shift how companies design new products and features to always consider younger people because kids and teens are on every platform whether they're supposed to be there or not. Right. You had said that there were two important examples. So what's the second? said that there were two important examples. So what's the second? The second is right here in the United States. It's California, which last September passed its own design code law to protect young people online. And among other things, it requires tech companies likely to have people under 18 as users to turn on the highest privacy settings by default for those users,

and to turn off by default any features that might put them at risk. Right. It imposes guardrails. Exactly. I mean, the way I think about the California law and even the UK law, they are product safety laws like we have for cars, right? Cars have to have seatbelts. Cars have to have airbags. And what these children's online safety laws are saying is that social media companies and in California also gaming companies and others must have the equivalent of seatbelts and airbags for minors online. Whereas Utah's law. Whereas Utah's law, right, is like, kids, can't drive the car unless your parents say so. Do we know if lawmakers in Utah ever considered these more targeted

approaches that we're talking about, the UK and California ones? Well, there are some rules in the Utah bill that get at structural issues like the California and UK laws. There are rules that say that strangers should not be allowed to contact young people in this Utah law. But mainly, this is a parental rights bill. Right. And it says kids can't go on these social media sites and have accounts without parental permission, and parents can have access to kids' posts. The Utah approach, it feels like, fundamentally declares that social media is kind of irredeemable when it comes to kids, right? It's so plagued with problems that cutting kids off entirely or requiring their parents to opt them in is the right answer. And therefore, it seems to put less faith in the idea that these platforms can never get better and be good for kids than what's happening in the UK and in California.

Does that feel right? I think that the Utah law, in a way, puts social media in the same category as tobacco or alcohol. Huh. Right? This is risky. It's a controlled substance. And so it basically says social media presents a huge risk, and it needs to be controlled, and parents need to be tightly involved, and there needs to be age rules.

And I think that the California law has a California approach, which is the sky is blue. We're optimistic. We are the technology state. And we think that social media can have all kinds of benefits for kids. And there is evidence that social media can be really beneficial for kids and for teens. It can improve their sense of community and belonging and their quality of life, and it can decrease stress. And so this California law is saying we're going to innovate structural changes that are going to try

to make these platforms safer for kids. Got it. So let's turn to the future of this sweeping landmark law in Utah, because it seems to raise two pretty obvious questions about its viability in the long term. And I think the first is, isn't it very likely to be challenged in court? And isn't it legally vulnerable to that challenge? Yes and yes. So the concern is that the law could restrict the availability of information and stifle important resources. And so the thinking is that it could restrict access to content on social media that's protected by the First Amendment. Got it. And the second question, of course, is even if this law does survive a legal challenge,

how enforceable are its restrictions in a world where children routinely outwit the parental restrictions of almost every major technology that exists. I mean, I remember as a kid lying to the websites that asked for my age, right? All you have to do is scroll to the right year that you're supposed to have been born to be the right age. It was pretty easy to defeat.

So how is this Utah system supposed to work on a practical level that makes it not easily work-aroundable for digitally savvy kids? So this law will require social media companies to verify the age of their users. So you won't just be able to make up whatever age you want to be or whatever birth date you want. You will have to provide some kind of documentation. And it will be up to Utah Consumer Protection to develop rules around this. It could be that everybody on social media in Utah will have to provide their driver's license or, you know, put five cents on their credit card

or some other form of identity. It does not have to be a government ID. And yeah, some kids may steal the driver's licenses out of their parents' wallets and claim to be their parents. Kids will find ways around it, but I think if they really institute this age verification, then it will be much harder for younger kids to foil the law. I'm curious how states beyond Utah are thinking about this landmark law and to the degree that they want to do something about minors and social media, whether they are looking more to Utah as the model or the UK and California as the model. So you have different states doing different things because you've got New York and New Jersey

and New Mexico and Maryland that have introduced laws that are similar to the California law and the UK law. And then you have Arkansas, which has introduced a bill that's similar to Utah, which requires parental consent for minors. And then you have Texas, which wants to go even further and has introduced a bill to ban social media accounts for all minors. And then you have Texas, which wants to go even further and has introduced a bill to ban social media accounts for all minors. Without even an opt-in function

for parents. Right. It's going to be like alcohol. No minors. Wow. And to me, the big question is what's going to happen at the federal level. Because even from a tech industry standpoint, they don't want a patchwork of laws where in some states it's one thing and in other states it's something else. Industries often want a national law to standardize everything. And parents want this too, right? Parents are tearing their hair out and are worried about what their kids are doing online. And I think many kids might want some of these rules, like turning off access to social media at night.

Right. And so where do we think the federal solution might end up landing, if there is a federal solution? It's going to be interesting to see if they meet in the middle, because one of the remarkable things is we know that we are in the middle of a virulent culture war where we have extreme polar feelings. And yet the protection and the concern about children and teens online is something that everybody on both sides of the aisle is worried about, parents and grandparents and even teens themselves. And I was talking to the senator in Utah who sponsored the bill we're talking about, and he's a Republican. And he was saying that he listened to President Biden's State of the Union. And the president mentioned this. The president said, we must hold social media platforms accountable for the national experiment they're conducting on our children.

And then the president called for federal regulations to strengthen privacy protections and other issues that could help protect kids online. And so the state senator from Utah said he was listening to that and thinking, you know, he and the president who have very different politics are on the same page. So this might be one of those very rare issues that brings Republicans and Democrats together in Congress as worried parents. I think you're right. I think there's a lot of goodwill here on both sides. And I think that if there is a child online safety bill that actually gets enacted by Congress, it is likely to have elements of both of these different types of bills that we talked about.

It would be somewhere between we must have seatbelts and airbags and don't get into the car at all. Natasha, thank you very much. Thank you for having me. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Sunday, President Biden approved the declaration of a major disaster in Mississippi after a powerful tornado killed at least 26 people and nearly obliterated the town of Rolling Fork. the town of Rolling Fork.

The tornado produced wind gusts of over 166 miles per hour that uprooted trees, shredded homes, and reduced a fire station to a pile of rubble. From what I've seen so far, it's surreal. I've seen tornadoes hit throughout the nation, but to see this, to see homes leveled and businesses gone, it is unreal. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired his defense minister on Sunday, less than a day after the minister called on Netanyahu to postpone a controversial plan to strengthen his government's role in Israel's judiciary.

The defense minister, Yoav Galant, had warned that the plan was causing turmoil in Israel's military and was therefore a threat to national security. By firing him, Netanyahu signaled that he plans to proceed with the judicial overhaul, despite widespread protests against it. Today's episode was produced by Nina Feldman, Moosh Zady, Michael Simon-Johnson, and Stella Tan. It was edited by Mark George, with help from Devin Taylor, contains original music by Marion Lozano and Rowan Nemisto and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansford of Wonderly. Special thanks to Mary Wilson. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.