Don't know about boobies, but I would guess META/other infinite scroll products are this generation's cigarettes in terms of long term harm and we do a severe disservice to all young people that are exposed to this product. Moreover, asking parents to intervene is obviously not going to work because they, themselves, have been partially ruined by it and lack the critical thinking required to intervene and the prowess to execute. Same reason why we needed government to intervene for cigarettes.

I am not endorsing removing all anonymity from being online, but continuing the status quo with social media is a non starter for humanity. So tell me how we can help kids not get ruined by the internet without a mechanism specifically identifying that they're online in the first place?

Then the solution could be just like the solution to tobacco addiction: tax social media companies HARD, tax all advertising on social media 10x, 20x, or ban advertising on/for social media outright, ban advertising of kids products, ban showing use of social media in movies not rated 18, ... the problem will vanish just like cigarettes.

But no, that's not what governments are doing. They want control and surveillance.

You get robbed and raped at the local park, broken bones riding a bike, permanent disability playing a sport, drown when swimming, disappear on a hike, overdose at a party, “become violent” playing video games, join a cult at a rock concert, rot your brain watching TV, eating disorders from ballet and gymnastics, traumatic brain injury from a trampoline, choke on a marble, fall when rock climbing, crash your car, get Lyme disease camping, get skin cancer playing outside, develop body dysmorphia playing with a Barbie, socially isolated without Facebook, socially dysfunctional with it, and join a gang if you have nothing else to do.

Everything, from “anything” to “literally nothing”, has been marched up on stage as the latest thing that’s a danger to children. All of it is true. Existing is dangerous, and that cannot be legislated away. Parents are supposed to be preparing their children for the dangers that life brings with it, not grinding down the tips of forks.

Having a healthy fear of skateboarding saved more broken bones than knee pads, so maybe parents should help their children understand that their peer isn’t as cool as they look on Instagram… or they get bombarded with it when they pass the minimum Facebook age and we’re back here in a few years raising the social media age to 35.

> I would guess

It's going to take a lot more evidence to get me anywhere near consideration that this is a trade worth making. Again, we know that fast food can be attributed to hundreds of thousands of early deaths per anum, but we regulate that not at all. In fact it's sadly a staple of the average kids diet.

Passing laws out of fear is not how any competent legislature should operate.

> continuing the status quo with social media is a non starter for humanity. So tell me how we can help kids not get ruined by the internet without a mechanism specifically identifying that they're online

What if I told you it's very simple? We work at banning the harmful dynamics of corporate social media for everyone [0], rather than beating around the bush about kids. In fact, trying to avoid this is exactly why Faceboot et al are lobbying for this age verification crap in the first place - to escape the one tiny avenue of liability that has managed to exist, so they can keep kicking the can down the road.

Given how wholly top-down these proposals all are, frankly they would be better off being referred to as "give control of what your kids can see to the judgement of corporate attorneys.

[0] antitrust enforcement would go a long way here. Faceboot operates on online hosting service, so they should be prohibited from anticompetitively tying the client software used to access it (which necessarily includes "the algorithm").