Unplugging the Youth: Is a Social Media Ban the Answer?

Ban Social Media for Minors? Balancing Safety and Freedom for Youth

By Nate Klemp, Ph.D., Author and Founder of LIFE XT, and Sophia Cope, Senior Staff Attorney, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Jason Kelley, Activism Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation

A Social Media Ban for Minors Would Protect Our Children 

By Nate Klemp, Ph.D.– Author and Founder of LIFE XT

How would you feel if a company knowingly marketed an addictive product to children? This happened recently when e-cigarette company Juul created a line of vape flavors like apple juice and strawberry ice cream. Juul was forced to pay a $462 million settlement, upholding one of society’s mechanisms for protecting our children: laws prohibiting minors from purchasing these products.

The logic behind such laws is straightforward. When it comes to addictive and harmful substances or behaviors—like cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, and gambling—children should be protected until they are better equipped to make autonomous decisions. Yet when it comes to social media, which may be the most widespread behavioral addiction today, we cast this logic aside.

Social Media Compromises Mental Health 

Teens who spend more than three hours a day on social media are twice as likely to experience mental health issues like depression and anxiety. Excessive social media use is also linked to poor sleep, body image, and self-esteem. In addition, using these technologies during a critical developmental period may lead to lifelong changes in brain structure, compromising brain regions involved in emotional regulation, impulse control, and sensitivity to social rewards. 

Our kids aren’t accidentally encountering these harms. Social media platforms are designed to be addictive. They use persuasive technology designs, such as endless scrolling, gamification and social reward strategies to maximize the time spent in virtual environments. Approximately 50 percent of teens report that they feel addicted to their phones. Neuroimaging studies suggest that frequent social media use may change the brain to sustain addiction feedback loops. The more children swipe through TikToks or Instagram Reels, the more their brains’ reward centers change and mimic the differences seen in other behavioral addictions like gambling or shopping.

Compounding Societal Effects 

But shouldn’t these decisions be left to each family? Why take this power out of the hands of people living in a free society? Because there is a collective-action issue at hand.

Once even a few parents allow their kids on social media, a distorted set of incentives emerges. Families opposed to social media confront a lose-lose trade-off: they can restrict social media and risk social ostracism and isolation, or they can let their children join and risk all the consequences of social media use. It’s a trade-off that forces many parents to begrudgingly allow their children on social media, ultimately eroding the freedom of choice advocated by those opposed to a social media ban. 

Banning social media use for minors would solve the collective-action problem. Youth would now have the freedom to spend less time scrolling and more time interacting with each other in meaningful ways. Parents would no longer have to choose between social isolation and the harm brought on by device addiction. If we support laws restricting children from buying cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, and lottery tickets, we should do the same for this new, destructive addiction: social media. 

Social Media Does More Good Than Harm 

By Sophia Cope – Senior Staff Attorney, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Jason Kelley – Activism Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation

People have worried about how media affects youth throughout U.S. history. Juvenile delinquency was blamed on dime novels in the 1800s and comic books in the 1950s. There were outcries over radio, movies, and television in the twentieth century as well as video games and social media today. 

Concerns about the media’s effect on young people, though often hyperbolic, are understandable. Yet no definitive research has proven that social media overall negatively impacts youth. The American Psychological Association reported in 2023 that “using social media is not inherently beneficial or harmful to young people.” The effects depend on multiple factors, including “teens’ pre-existing strengths or vulnerabilities and the contexts in which they grow up.”

Learning From Lived Youth Experiences 

Unfortunately, the potential negative consequences regularly overshadow the benefits. At the Electronic Frontier Foundation, we put out an open call for stories to shift the conversation to what young people would lose with a social media ban. Thousands responded with insightful, emotional stories about their online experiences.

One 14-year-old said, “I found so many friends and new interests from social media… [and] I have become a much more open-minded person.” Another teenager stated that without social media “I’d lose the space that accepts me. I’d lose the only place where I can be me.” Some young people described how these platforms saved their lives. For example, a 16-year-old said, “Social media helped me escape a very traumatic childhood and helped me connect with others. Quite frankly, it saved me from being brainwashed.”

A social media ban for minors would deprive future generations of these benefits while dismissing the lived experience of millions of modern young people. Not only would such a ban be the wrong approach, but it would also violate the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Protecting Free Speech with Social Media 

The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized that minors have First Amendment rights to express themselves and access information. In the digital age, the Court has also upheld minors’ right to access violent video games stating that “No doubt a State possesses legitimate power to protect children from harm, but that does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed.” The same should be true for social media.

These First Amendment protections matter. Minors, especially teens, deserve access to modern technologies that help them realize their identities, passions, and learn about the world as they become integrated members of society. As one 15-year-old said, a social media ban “would lead to people being uninformed about things, and it would start an era of censorship on the Internet, and by looking at the past, censorship is never good.”

What young people need isn’t protection from social media. They need policies that acknowledge the role it plays in their lives while improving that ecosystem: namely, privacy protections, promoting competition and choice in the marketplace, and digital literacy training.

Instead of a Social Media Ban, We Need to Find a Middle Way

By Nate Klemp, Ph.D.– Author and Founder of LIFE XT

Ms. Cope and Mr. Kelley offer a compelling case for allowing teens on social media platforms. Their most persuasive claim is that social media helps young people build community, find acceptance, and cultivate meaning. They offer real-world examples to support their claim. These adolescents, and surely many others, have benefited from social media.

I am partially persuaded because social media does appear useful in creating spaces where young people can connect and build a community. However, this argument leads to a problematic trade-off: it forces us to choose between banning minors from social media or granting them full, unfettered access to largely unregulated and often dangerous platforms.

Social Media Concerns Are Justified 

Ms. Cope and Mr. Kelley suggest that earlier technologies such as dime novels, radio, and television were falsely blamed for destroying the minds of our youth. This might be true, but just because previous media wasn’t as bad as originally feared doesn’t mean that our current fears about social media are overblown. 

In addition, Ms. Cope and Mr. Kelley cite a report by The American Psychological Association stating that social media is neither beneficial nor harmful to young people. However, one can find many other leading researchers and institutions that take a more dire view of social media.

Finally, the claim that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that “minors are entitled to a significant measure of First Amendment protection,” falls short for two reasons: First, the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court and the norms of our society both recognize that free speech protections are not absolute, especially regarding minors. If they were, we would have no way of preventing our children from accessing pornography nor could we legally enforce the PG-13 and R rating guidelines of the Motion Picture Association of America.

Second, social media platforms are not a form of speech—they are venues where speech occurs. The distinction may sound subtle, but it matters. If we think of these platforms as venues, then they become equivalent to spaces in the analogue world, where minors have limited access based on potential dangers. For example, minors aren’t allowed into strip clubs, bars, or nightclubs.  

An Alternative to a Social Media Ban

Perhaps there is a middle way. Regulation could be used to incentivize social media companies to create separate teen-friendly platforms that reinforce the many benefits while removing the most nefarious design features that cause harm. These alternative spaces might remove social reward strategies, such as likes, and give teen users more control by allowing them to set limits on their own screen time. These platforms might also include stronger privacy protections to prevent teens from encountering sexual predators. This approach could promote community without exposing our nation’s adolescents to addictive and potentially harmful content.

I think the best solution is to find a middle way—to create a more healthy, less addictive, virtual space for our youth to gain a sense of community without losing their humanity.

Use Privacy Laws and Competition to Incentivize Change

By Sophia Cope – Senior Staff Attorney, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Jason Kelley – Activism Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation

We appreciate Mr. Klemp’s hope for a middle ground that allows young people access to social media while finding ways to undo some of the platforms’ more nefarious aspects. We agree that there is room for improvement on social media platforms—for every user, not just younger ones. 

Rather than a social media ban, we would argue that the best starting point for change is privacy law. The surveillance advertising that fuels these platforms has been called the “original sin” of the Internet. While there’s strong disagreement about how to address the dangers online platforms create for young people, a vast majority of Americans support the passage of a comprehensive federal privacy law. Such legislation would protect children by limiting the amount of data companies can collect, use, and share about everyone—including children. 

Right now, the social media ecosystem is fueled by a desire to monopolize our attention, as Mr. Klemp rightly points out. Social media sites profit from increased usage and data collection; they are incentivized to get (and keep) more users. Young people are locked into the platforms because leaving a site means leaving their friends. 

Privacy Laws Can Make a Difference

Upending that model would level the playing field between giant platforms with troves of user data and startups trying to build something better. Such a law would encourage platforms to provide better value, such as more effective tools to allow users to control their experience. Privacy laws paired with laws encouraging competition may even allow users to keep their friend lists intact while changing platforms.

Finally, privacy laws would help everyone, not just youth. Over the last decade, outcries over social media have taken many forms—from the Cambridge Analytica scandal that left people worried their data was being misused, to misinformation peddlers and fears of political radicalization. Young people are just one of many vulnerable groups online. If we take on the “original sin” of the Internet, we start to heal the whole ecosystem, rather than just some vulnerable users.

A Social Media Ban Would Hurt Freedom of Expression

We disagree with Mr. Klemp’s reduction of social media platforms to mere venues. While venues such as strip clubs have diminished First Amendment rights, they also have some measure of protection as places where expressive conduct occurs. While there is governmental interest in shielding minors from adult nudity, restricting them from accessing other venues such as bars, has more to do with limiting their alcohol exposure rather than limiting their speech. 

Social media platforms, by contrast, are all about speech. They enable users to express themselves—the core right of the First Amendment. A social media ban or restriction of access would be akin to banning individuals in the physical world from bookstores, art galleries, and open mic nights.

This is again why we prefer the “middle way” of privacy law. We believe it will help create a better, less divisive online ecosystem than constitutionally problematic speech and design regulations. Ultimately, we agree with Mr. Klemp about many of the goals that we must accomplish. We hope he, and Congress, can meet us there.

If you enjoyed this article, please make sure to like, comment, and share below. You can also read more of our Political Pen Pals debates here.

Nate Klemp, Ph.D.

Author and Founder of LIFE XT | Website

Nate Klemp, Ph.D. is a bestselling author and formally-trained political philosopher. He is the author of the new book OPEN: Living With an Expansive Mind in a Distracted World. Nate is coauthor of The 80/80 Marriage: A New Model for a Happier, Stronger Marriage, a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection, and he is author of The New York Times Bestseller Start Here: Master the Lifelong Habit of Wellbeing. He has been featured in the LA Times, The New York Times, and The Times of London and has appeared on Good Morning America and Talks at Google. Nate cofounded the mindfulness training company Life Cross Training and holds a B.A. and M.A. in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. from Princeton University.

Sophia Cope

Senior Staff Attorney, Electronic Frontier Foundation

Sophia Cope is a Senior Staff Attorney on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's civil liberties team, working on a variety of free speech and privacy issues. Key topics include border searches of electronic devices, surveillance and human rights, the right to record the police, Section 230, and student speech and student privacy online. She has been a civil liberties attorney for two decades and has experience in both litigation and policy advocacy. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Guardian, Slate, and Huffington Post.

Jason Kelley

Activism Director, Electronic Frontier Foundation

Jason Kelley oversees activism at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the leading nonprofit organization defending civil liberties in the digital world, where he is also the co-host of EFF's podcast, "How To Fix the Internet." Before joining EFF, he managed marketing strategy and content for a software company that helps non-programmers learn to code. Jason received his BA in English and Philosophy from Kent State University and his M.F.A. in creative writing from The University of the South.