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I get why people from certain countries instinctively see any government involvement as bad, but I don’t think that’s a universal truth? Yes, bad government can do enormous harm, but I think good government can also raise society above what would happen if everyone were simply left to their own devices.

As others have noted, we already accept a long list of age-based rules: alcohol, driving, tobacco, gambling, movies and games, compulsory schooling, consent, marriage, tattoos, credit cards, pornography, firearms, etc.

Seen in that context, restricting social media for children isn’t some unprecedented intrusion - it’s another attempt to limit access to something that appears harmful for younger people. Will it work? I can only hope. But it seems reasonable to at least try.

I’m not claiming this opinion fits every country - it may be due to biases of where I live. Where I am (and in my opinion), social media seems like a clear and massive net negative, especially for kids. Perhaps in some places social media is a genuinely positive part of daily life, and from that perspective the same law might look like needless government overreach.

Broadly, I agree with your sentiment. As soon as some people rule over others, given enough time, things creep towards total enslavement and disenfranchisement of the others. This has been proven over and over.

The question then becomes, how do we organise society instead?

YOUR government might be a bigger threat than anything YOU might find online, but this statement is just not generally true whatsoever. Given how broad this argument is, if anything, it’s an argument for improving government, not getting rid of it. Every freedom has two sides, the more positive freedoms you get, the less negative freedoms you get, and vice versa. There is no possibility of “infinite freedom”, it’s always zero sum, and so always a balance on a per topic basis, which hyperreductive arguments like this (“state level infringements of freedom”) totally ignore.