As the Federal Trade Commission holds workshops on how Big Tech is supposedly “harming kids,” policymakers from both the left and the right are uniting behind a dangerous idea: that government should regulate social media in the name of protecting children. But as this new paper makes clear, the real threat to families and freedom isn’t smartphones—it’s bureaucrats.
“Just as patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, ‘for the children’ is the last refuge of what Isabel Paterson called the ‘humanitarian with a guillotine.’”
The paper exposes the flimsy science behind the panic, the constitutional problems with regulation, and the moral failure of those trying to outsource parenting to the state. Efforts like the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) not only threaten the First Amendment rights of children and adults alike, but empower the FTC and state attorneys general to become arbiters of what speech is “safe” or “appropriate.”
“Banning minors from using social media prevents parents from ensuring their child’s first exposure to social media is under parental supervision… The only beneficiaries of legislation limiting minors’ access are power-hungry politicians, bureaucrats, and parents too lazy to do the job of parenting.”
Instead of empowering Washington, this paper argues we should be empowering parents—with the tools that already exist, and with the freedom to raise their children as they see fit.
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