By Dom Serafini
There are experts, like New York University professor Jonathan Haidt, who, in his book The Anxious Generation, argues in favor of social media regulations. Others, like Jacob Mchangama, executive director of the Vanderbilt University think tank, The Future of Free Speech, located in Nashville, Tennessee, argue that children have First Amendment rights (i.e., freedom of speech).
This issue became a heated public debate in the U.S. and around the world after Instagram and YouTube were found to be harmfully addictive to children and teens by a jury in a Los Angeles, California Superior Court. Meta Platforms, Instagram’s owner, and Google, which owns YouTube, were ordered — by a nearly unanimous jury — to pay $3 million (plus $3 million in punitive damages) to a plaintiff who brought the court action and testified that her use of social media, which she started before becoming a teenager, had contributed to mental-health issues, including anxiety, depression, and body dysmorphia.
Some 3,000 other similar lawsuits are currently pending in California against Meta, YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok.
The basis of Mchangama’s position is that, in a 1961 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court supported the right to anonymity, and that courts have ruled that children have First Amendment rights. This, however, goes against parental responsibility, which is a legal requirement up until the child reaches the age of 18.
The basis of Haidt’s position is that social media resulted in an international epidemic of adolescent mental illness, causing anxiety and depression.
This goes against a 2024 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine review and the most recent 2026 Journal of Public Health statement, which declares that social media doesn’t cause changes in adolescent health at the population level. In the meanwhile, it was only recently that my cardiologist said that I could eat one egg a week, “but to do it fast before us medics change our minds.”
In addition, for the Los Angeles lawsuit against social media, the plaintiff’s attorney — the conservative Texas lawyer Mark Lanier — did not focus on Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which protects content, but on the platforms’ features. YouTube even argued that it is not a social media site, but a streaming platform.
My position is a Solomonic one: Split the child in two and declare the culprit the anonymity factor. In the view of one who has been accused of false radio, television, and telephone addiction in his adolescence (like all others of the same generation), the problems stemming from social media are generated by the fact that maleficent actors that cause anxiety can remain anonymous.
Plus, by extending First Amendment protections to minors, U.S. courts appear to overlook the inconsistency of “underage drinking” laws that penalize facilitators, while still permitting those same individuals to be drafted for military service.
In many countries, like the U.K. and Australia, users must verify their identities before accessing social media. Yet, those same users retain a level of anonymity: their real identities can only be disclosed through police investigation. In contrast, under U.S. law, minors are often shielded from arrest, and their parents are not always held accountable—creating tension with established principles of parental responsibility.
In conclusion, instead of imposing anonymous ID requirements and age-based restrictions, I would enforce name attribution in public discourse, ensuring accountability akin to traditional forms of communication — radio, television, and the telephone.
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