A large-scale survey has shown that most Americans would support a ban social media use by children under the age of 16.
The biggest supporters of the proposal were parents with kids under 18 years old, where almost two-thirds were in favor …
There is now very strong evidence that social media use by children and teenagers can have a harmful impact on mental health through exposure to everything from unrealistic body images through cyberbullying to posts about self-harm.
Multiple countries around the world, as well as a number of US states, have either introduced bans or have announced plans to do so. The list includes Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Malaysia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, UAE, the UK, and Vietnam.
A very large-scale survey by the Pew Research Center found that 56% of US adults would support a ban on the use of social media by children under the age of 16. Among parents of under 18s, support hit 65%. In what seems a rarity these days, there’s no political divide.
Across major demographic and partisan groups, more Americans support than oppose banning those under 16 from using social media […] The idea has bipartisan support, too. Far more Republicans and Republican-leaning independents favor than oppose this type of ban. The same is true among Democrats and Democratic leaners.
Top comment by Clevins
Absolutely not because of what such a ban implies. How will someone prove that they're over 16? right, by giving up identifying personal information. There's no other way to do this - for it to work robustly, everyone would need to hand over government ID to Meta, TikTok, X and the like. That price is too high, even though I agree that social media is a problem for kids.
Beware the policy cry of "but think of the children!" because that's almost always a cover for something else,
Just 21% of respondents opposed a ban.
Support for enforcement of parental consent to create a social media account is even higher.
85% of adults say they would support social media companies requiring parental consent for minors to create a social media account. That’s up from 81% in 2023. 78% support requiring people to verify their age before using these platforms, up from 71%. 78% support limits on how much time minors spend on social media, up from 69%.
People often fail to grasp sampling theory, where what seem like relatively small numbers of people are surveyed. However, statistical analysis shows that a sample of as few as 2,000 people can reduce the margin of error to below 5%. In this particular case, a total of 9,750 people responded, giving a margin of error of plus or minus 1.4%.
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