Thinking about this this will of course fail. Because teens will do what they did before online: make their own social networks. But by necessity these will be small.

I hope that's what will happen. That this is only really a problem for FANG, for the tech industry and doesn't actually prevent social media.

Funny, but I (and I believe many who support this law) would say that's a good thing. The problem is not (and never was) social interaction online, it is large corporations designing their algorithms to be as addictive as possible to tie kids as early as possible to their services.

I have had to recently get back to using Facebook (after creating the account ~15 years ago and leaving it dormant for >10 years), due to several sports clubs using it as their only means of communication. It's scary how good these algorithms have become, I often only want to look up something related to the club and end up being roped into 1h of doomscrolling. And I'm an adult with significant better impulse control than most teenagers.

While FAANG undoubtedly have chosen profit over safety I'm not yet convinced non-FAANG social media is significantly safer, in terms of mental health, antisocial behaviour or predation.