Parents should police their kids’ social media, not the government

By Jon Caldara

Yes, social media sucks. Government tracking won’t make it better.

As regular readers can attest, I am barely literate.

If you find my work hard to read, be comforted by the fact I find, well, everything hard to read. It wasn’t until well into adulthood that I understood dyslexia. Giving me a book is like throwing tennis shoes at a paraplegic. It’s just mean.

Books on tape opened a new world for me. To check out digital audio books from the Denver Public Library I recently needed to show up in person to get a new library card.

They forced me to show them an official photo ID! The horror! The intimidation I experienced! We accept as fact requiring a photo ID to vote is voter suppression, plain and simple. Thus, we outlawed such oppression.

By the same logic, requiring a photo ID for a library card is literacy suppression. Showing a photo ID to TSA is mobility oppression, and so on.

We’ll get a good sense of our lawmakers’ true priorities on IDs if, instead of mandating voter ID, they mandate photo ID to use your own computer.

Enter Senate Bill 86, a well-intentioned attempt to have government play cybernanny to our children.

The hope is to protect innocent young people from the abuses, pressures and temptations of social media platforms. Understandable goal, but a job for parents, not faceless governmental bureaucrats.

There is something oddly compelling watching elected officials pretend they have dominion over technologies. These slide-rule-aged lawmakers don’t get that tech changes faster than their silly laws. And, no matter how spry lawmakers think they are, they just can’t outrun technology and the young people who know how to use it.

Remember when U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette made herself a national embarrassment when trying to outlaw firearm magazines, saying they were thrown away after they were used. (Um. They’re not.) It’s comical when people who don’t understand something try to regulate it.

Note to lawmakers stuff you don’t use. History will be kinder to you.

Senate Bill 86 requires companies such as X, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok to ascertain the age and gender of their users. And that really means seeing users’ photo IDs, unless you think kids won’t fib.

The bill forces tech companies to report how many users are minors, segmented into different age groups, report how much time these users are on the platform. It gets so nannyistic it requires them to report how many kiddies are using the platform after their bedtimes.

Who knew it’s a core governmental function to require big tech to not only mass surveil our children but to make sure they go to bed on time. (As crazy as it sounds, concerned parents could take away smartphones at nighttime, but it’s easier to let government play the heavy. No one wants to stand up to their kids.)

With Senate Bill 86, we have the same bunch of legislators who not only still have VCRs at home but have to ask their grandkids to get it to stop flashing “12:00,” crafting legislation to keep those same grandkids off social media. Yeah, that’ll work.

They are making the indulgent conceit that good decisions can be mandated by the government limiting the supply of something they don’t like. In this case, social media. But people, especially tech-savvy youngsters, will find a way.

Schools use internet blockers to keep students off certain sites and social platforms. In middle school my daughter said the kids found that laughable. They’d just use VPNs to get around the blocks. When teachers found out about VPNs they couldn’t understand what Visible Panty Lines had to do with the internet.

This bill leads X, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok to become the TSA agents of the internet, checking the IDs of everyone who signs on to their platform.

To our leftist lawmakers I ask, do you really want Elon Musk, the owner of X, to spy on our children? I think you’d want laws preventing him from collecting this kind of mass surveillance. To our conservative lawmakers, if there are any left, I’d suggest it’s better to find ways to empower parents than to regulate businesses if we care about our children.

And for God’s sake, if you’re pushing identification, start at the voting booth. And leave my kids to me.