Regulations on social media won’t substitute for parents

According to a report issued the other day by Dalio Education, the Connecticut-based philanthropy, thousands of children and young adults in the state are “disconnected” — uneducated, alienated, unemployed or even unemployable.

Meanwhile Connecticut Attorney General William Tong had the state join a national lawsuit against Meta, operator of the social media companies Facebook and Instagram, alleging that thousands more of the state’s children are too connected — to social media. Instagram particularly, Tong and other attorneys general claim, has grabbed kids with “addictive platforms” that have caused a “youth mental health catastrophe.”

The attorneys general claim that this attractiveness to children violates state consumer protection laws and the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.

But the essential claim of the lawsuits is just that the “platforms” are too interesting to kids. A statement from Tong’s office condemns “features like infinite scroll and near-constant alerts,” features that “were created with the express goal of hooking young users. These manipulative tactics continually lure children and teens back onto the platform.”

But the only new element here is the technology being used in pursuit of an objective, not the objective itself, which is as old as storytelling: gaining and holding on to an audience. That was the objective of troubadors, fairs and theaters, and then newspapers, magazines, radio and television, long before computers and the internet. Newspapers, magazines, radio and television still sensationalize to grab audiences to sell advertising just as Facebook and Instagram do, though Facebook and Instagram may do it better because their subjects are the members of their audience themselves.

Kids spent much less time gossiping about each other before the advent of the telephone. Before television they were far less fascinated by violence and guns. Before welfare for childbearing outside marriage they were far better raised and educated and healthier mentally and physically.

Any “addiction” here is not physical, as with drugs, but psychological. People can walk away from Facebook and Instagram if they have something else to do. Indeed, most users of Facebook and Instagram do have other things to do — like make a living.

It’s just the nature of young people to be self-absorbed, neurotic, insecure and idle, more so if they live in homes with little parental supervision and in a society that demands no educational accomplishment from them.

Citing company documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal, the attorneys general cite the indifference of Facebook and Instagram to the neurosis its “platforms” can induce in children, especially girls. Of course children probably shouldn’t be exposed to some things until they are older, if then. But if Facebook and Instagram are destroying young people, it couldn’t happen if their parents didn’t provide them with mobile phones and computers that allow internet access to those “platforms.”

Attorney General Tong blames Facebook and Instagram for the inability of children to get enough sleep, as if children didn’t lose sleep because of other obsessions long before social media. But if some children still aren’t getting enough sleep, who should be called to account first? The distractions that interest the kids — that is, themselves and their friends and acquaintances? Government? What about their parents?

Whether they are “disconnected” or too connected, children need constant attention from parents so they remain engaged with life without becoming alienated, neurotic, self-absorbed and obsessed.

Is a government that increasingly throws gambling, marijuana and transgenderism at children, a government that lets just about any danger bypass immigration law and infiltrate the country, really fit to regulate children’s use of social media even in their own homes, as the attorneys general suggest?

In the land of the First Amendment, is government really fit to prevent any particular mechanism of expression from reaching young people? If so, how would that be any different from the supposed “book banning” many of the attorneys general oppose?

Or might the country do better in regard to social media, “disconnection” and other troublesome issues if it stopped destroying the family with welfare policy and education with social promotion?