How you feel about all this will likely come down to whether you believe that social-media platforms are addictive products—like cigarettes—marketed to kids or that they are vital and intractable parts of the national conversation. If they are just modern cigarettes, they can and should be regulated or even just outright banned for young people. But if they’re a vehicle for expression, then the government should do what it can to protect the free-speech rights of minors.

The difficulty, of course, is that these two visions of social media are not mutually exclusive in any way. Social media does seem uniquely harmful to young people, but it is also the way in which they express themselves and find friends and confidantes.

Read more:

Kang, J. C. (2023, April 4). The case for banning children from social media. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-case-for-banning-children-from-social-media