Social media is the only place that kids can go

Congress is currently working on a bill called the “Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA)”, which sounds good in title, but really isn’t. Danah Boyd has an excellent article explaining what the purpose is and why this is likely to backfire in a big way.

In an article where Techdirt was summarizing the state of KOSA, author Mike Masnick explained things in a way that was quite eye-opening to me. He said:

“I keep bringing up the study from last year in the Journal of Pediatrics, mainly because it strongly suggests a leading cause of the mental health crisis we see today is that kids no longer have spaces they can go to hang out with other kids without parents hovering over them at all times. Social media has become that space for many kids… so of course, adults are trying to shut it down.”

The study he mentioned was from last year, and it included some fascinating charts. For example, they show how the suicide rate in teens has crept up in recent years as social media has aged:

But then if you zoom out further, it paints a different picture. There’s indeed a recent rise, but the rates are still much lower than in the 80’s and 90's: