Cecilia Kang, Ryan Mac, and Eli Tan (March, Hacker News):

The social media company Meta and the video streaming service YouTube harmed a young user with design features that were addictive and led to her mental health distress, a jury found on Wednesday, a landmark decision that could open social media companies to more lawsuits over users’ well-being.

[…]

Citing features like infinite scroll and algorithmic recommendations, K.G.M. sued Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, and Google’s YouTube, claiming they led to anxiety and depression.

Nick Heer:

For its part, the Wall Street Journal editorial board is standing up for beleaguered social media companies in an editorial today criticizing everything about these verdicts, including this specific means of liability, which it calls a “dodge” around Section 230.

[…]

Product design, though, is a different question. It would be a mistake, I think, to read Section 230 as a blanket allowance for any way platforms wish to use or display users’ posts. (Update: In part, that is because it is a free speech question.) From my entirely layman perspective, it has never struck me as entirely reasonable that the recommendations systems of these platforms should have no duty or expectation of care.

Nick Heer, on an April Massachusetts lawsuit:

To me, a non-lawyer, much of the actual text of the ruling (PDF) explaining why this lawsuit was not immediately turfed on Section 230 grounds seems pretty reasonable. For example, the judge says “[u]nder the default settings, Meta enables approximately forty types of notifications” for the Instagram app, which the government alleges “is designed to overwhelm young users and compel them repeatedly to reopen Instagram”. We can argue whether this is a meaningful thing for a government to police or if it is just another example of Meta resorting to tacky growth-hacking techniques instead of trusting their product is sufficiently compelling on its own. (Most days when I open Instagram in my browser, it puts a red badge over the notifications tab and suggests I have one new follower. I do not; I never have. It lies to me every time, presumably because it knows most people, including me, will usually click on that, thereby increasing a number on a dashboard somewhere.)

Mike Masnick:

couple weeks back, Jonathan Haidt published another entry in his ongoing campaign to convince the world that social media is inherently ruining kids’ lives. This one was a victory lap titled “Seven Lines of Evidence Against Social Media,” treating recent developments — including the social media addiction verdicts against Meta that most people are misunderstanding — as vindication of his thesis.

[…]

But then something inconvenient happened for Haidt’s thesis: Pew went and did a brand new study exploring teens’ experiences on TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat. This one asked the kids themselves.

[…]

Indeed, the research repeatedly suggests that for the very small number of kids who are facing mental health problems and overrelying on social media in response, the answer is a targeted intervention to help those individuals — not a broad “ban kids from social media” program.

Previously:

• UK Social Media Ban
• Kids Online Safety Act
• Australia’s Social Media Ban
• France’s Social Media Ban
• The Age Verification Trap
• EU Council Approves New “Chat Control” Mandate

Amanda Silberling (May 2025):

The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) has been reintroduced into Congress. If passed into law, this bill could impose some of the most significant legislative changes that the internet has seen in the U.S. since the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of 1998.

As it currently stands, KOSA would be able to hold social media platforms legally accountable if it’s proven that these companies aren’t doing enough to protect minors from harm. The bill includes a long list of possible harms, such as eating disorders, sexual exploitation, substance abuse, and suicide. Though it overwhelmingly passed through the Senate last year, the bill was stifled in the House.

[…]

“Apple is pleased to offer our support for the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). Everyone has a part to play in keeping kids safe online, and we believe [this] legislation will have a meaningful impact on children’s online safety,” Timothy Powderly, Apple’s senior director of Government Affairs, said in a statement.

Nick Heer:

The App Store Accountability Act is based on model legislation written by the Digital Childhood Alliance. The lobbying group also publishes marketing pieces, including one (PDF) that calls Apple’s age verification frameworks “ineffective”. Specifically, it points to the lack of parental consent required “for kids to enter into complex contracts”, with “no way to verify that parental consent has been obtained”.

Maya Posch (via ednl):

Since the arrival of so-called ‘social media’ the central tenet of never giving out your personal information which was front and center during the 1990s and 2000s got quite literally flipped around. Suddenly we had massive corporations practically begging you to give every last scrap of your personal information, every intimate detail of your daily life and with it every last second of your attention span.

[…]

The upshot of this reversal is that instead of a mostly comfortable anonymous experience, suddenly every second that you’re awake has been turned into the equivalent of a schoolyard during recess, the watercooler banter at the office and similar social interactions.

[…]

This raises many questions, such as whether ‘social media’ and the FOMO it introduces is a legitimate addiction, and whether we shouldn’t make being online more anonymous rather than enforce a rather dystopian ‘real name’ policy onto the populace.

Joe Mullin (Hacker News):

Within the next week, Congress is preparing to vote on the KIDS Act, a sprawling package of legislation that seeks to control Americans’ web browsing and private messaging. The package includes a revised version of the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, combined with a collection of other internet bills, study bills, reporting requirements, and new regulations. Instead of debating any of these proposals on their merits, lawmakers are attempting to move them all at once under an ultra-expedited process.

[…]

Buried inside the KIDS Act are provisions that will push online services to verify all users’ ages, require government-directed moderation policies for online speech, and even create new rules about private and encrypted communications. While supporters continue to claim this bill protects minors online, its requirements come at the expense of privacy, free expression, and the ability of people of all ages to use the internet without revealing sensitive data.

[…]

Several provisions of the bill create new rules around direct messages, disappearing or “ephemeral” messages, and AI chat services.

The bill includes language stating that certain KOSA requirements should not be construed to override strong encryption. But the protection is incomplete. The carve-out applies to certain features and messaging controls, but doesn’t apply to KOSA’s separate requirement that platforms “address” a list of harms to minors.

Previously:

• UK Social Media Ban
• Child Safety Features in appleOS 27
• Arizona Age Verification Bill
• Texas Age Verification Suspended
• Bluesky Blocking Access to Mississippi
• Tim Cook Opposes App Store Age Verification Bill

Tim Hardwick:

The British government will introduce a ban on social media access for all users under 16 years of age, set to take effect in 2027.

[…]

The plan goes further than a similar ban introduced in Australia. It will cover major platforms Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and X. An exhaustive list has not yet been released, but Starmer said the rules will apply to services “whose purpose is to enable social interaction and which allow users to post material.”

Messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal are not covered by the ban, and most social media platforms already require children to be over 13 to create an account and use their services.

Max Goldbart (Hacker News):

So-called AI ‘romantic companion’ chatbots – designed to simulate sexual relationships or roleplay with users – will have to enforce a minimum age of 18 and the government will also be looking in more detail at overnight curfews and breaks in infinite scrolling for under-18s, with more detail coming in July.

[…]

The government said it will “learn the lessons” from Australia’s experience by introducing more highly effective age assurance measures to support compliance, making it far harder for children to bypass safeguards.

Ax Sharma (Hacker News):

In practice that means anyone opening a new account will likely have to prove they’re over 16 by uploading an ID or passing a facial age scan, the same checks that adult sites serving UK visitors have implemented since July 2025 under the Online Safety Act.

Long-standing accounts are largely exempt, but signing up fresh now triggers verification, effectively ending anonymous account creation in the UK.

James Rodger (Hacker News):

New VPN rules are set to be issued by the Labour Party government as part of the under-16 social media ban. The government has not revealed any plans to regulate them, but ministers have said details about action alongside the social media ban, including regarding VPN use, will come in July.

Paige Collings and Jillian C. York (Hacker News):

There remains no reliable, privacy-preserving method of verifying the age of every internet user and methods vary from one platform to the next.

Young people will not simply be protected from being contacted by adults or endlessly scrolling—they’ll also lose access to educational videos on YouTube, local events on Facebook, and potentially cut off from distant friends and family.

[…]

The provision also requires internet service providers to limit the time kids spend online, and has rules about who can contact them online. These extreme rules will take decisions about using technology away from families and put them in the hands of government regulators.

Cory Doctorow (Hacker News):

The problem is, there’s no such thing as “age verification” for the internet. What we call “age verification” is actually mass surveillance, so invasive and pervasive that it makes the ad-tech industry’s commercial surveillance look like some kind of cypherpunk darknet pirate utopia[…]

[…]

Any attempt to save kids from online harms should start with saving kids from online surveillance, but that’s the opposite of what we’re doing today. After decades of failing to pass and enforce privacy controls for the internet, those same governments are breaking all land-speed records to pass “age verification” laws that make privacy illegal[…]

Anonymous (Hacker News):

Lots of US states, European countries, and Australia have introduced “age verification” regulations. They present it as the classic “save the children” talking point, but it’s really just a precursor to attribution of speech, particularly attributing your words to your real identity.

Sean Hollister (via John Gruber):

Azdoufal is the security researcher who used Claude Code to help discover that every DJI Romo robot vacuum cleaner and a million baby monitors and security cameras were embarrassingly easy to hack. This time, he says he discovered over 985,000 photo IDs sitting on the public internet for any half-decent hacker to steal.

[…]

Traditionally, you’d need to provide a photo ID every time you wanted to get into a club. But with the verification system, the receptionist can pull up your stored identity documents and check if your face matches. There’s also an optional app called PuffPal that lets clubs scan a QR code for faster entry.

But when Azdoufal decompiled that PuffPal app, he explains in his report, he discovered that Nefos had no meaningful level of security.

Previously:

• Kids Online Safety Act
• The Age Verification Trap
• Arizona Age Verification Bill
• France’s Social Media Ban
• UK Age Verification for VPNs
• UK Child Protections and Messaging Backdoor
• Australia’s Social Media Ban
• EU Council Approves New “Chat Control” Mandate
• Imgur Blocks UK Users Over Age Verification
• UK Online Safety Act

Update (2026-07-01): Craig Grannell:

I find it incredible that the UK government is about to create a cliff edge where teens will simultaneously be able to access social media and vote, having had no experience of the latter and with scant understanding of how algorithms work.

Update (2026-07-08): James Ball (via Nick Heer):

There are almost no truly public spaces on the internet. Everywhere we congregate is privately owned, even if it operates as a public space. But we seem somehow content to accept them as fiefdoms in their own right, beyond the reach of government. Instead of demanding that they function as safe and pleasant public spaces for all of us, we are asking our governments just to ban teenagers from them.

[…]

It is one thing to ban our children from one park when there are others nearby. It is quite another to ban them from every public space when there are no others on offer.

[…]

I am skeptical as to whether social media is as dangerous as some of its critics say. I am even more skeptical as to whether it is particularly dangerous to teens and young people. […] The central facet of my argument in this post is that wherever you land on the matters of the harms of social media, a ban for teenagers is the wrong response. If the harms are overstated, the policy is unnecessary. If they are not, it is an abdication.

Apple:

With software updates this fall, parents will be able to access new child safety features, including a simpler setup experience with a recommended set of essential apps, Ask to Browse, Time Allowances, and a redesigned Screen Time. These updates enhance Apple’s already industry-leading parental controls and underscore its commitment to building a safe and trusted platform for kids.

[…]

For years, Apple has integrated guidance from leading clinical and child development research, as well as online safety experts, into its products and services, and continues to help advance research into children’s digital wellbeing. Apple is working with the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) to adapt its Family Media Plan into a guide parents can reference when using Apple products. Apple also continues to collaborate with researchers to understand the impact of technology on children’s wellbeing, and is committed to advancing the science in this area.

Unanswered is whether they fixed Screen Time so that it actually works now. Currently, it’s a complete mess of settings that get lost, reports that don’t sync, and protections that manage to break sites and apps yet are also easily bypassed. Separately, it’s confusing and difficult to configure, but it seems like that part is improving. It’s hard to believe there wasn’t already a way to ask permission to access a new Web site.

Adam Engst:

To help parents manage how long children spend on allowed apps, Apple has introduced time allowances. A daily time allowance spans entertainment, games, and social media, with each category having its own allowance. Time allowances can vary by time of day and day of week as well, to keep kids from using certain apps during school and to allow more flexibility on weekends.

Does it support weekly rather than daily allowances?

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy:

Apple spending a big chunk of its WWDC keynote on parental controls was surprising for several reasons. But the biggest is that, despite all the airtime, it didn’t announce much new beyond a redesigned interface. Almost all the features touted already exist or are upgrades to current options. Why Apple chose to do this isn’t a mystery. You can trace the threads from the recent landmark social media trials against Meta and Google to the protesters outside the Cupertino HQ today: Apple is trying to show the world it’s being responsible when it comes to your children.

Craig Grannell:

Curious to see Mastodon almost unanimously hostile to the keynote parental controls bit. Maybe I’m missing something, but the vast majority of what was shown was iteration on existing features.

Corentin Cras-Méneur:

AND screen time and parental controls should actually work?? It feels like an early Christmas :->

Previously:

• WWDC 2026 Keynote
• The Age Verification Trap
• Screen Time Brokenness
• iOS Declared Age Range API
• Screen Time Bugs
• Losing Screen Time Settings
• Revised Messages Communication Safety Feature in iOS 15.2
• Scanning iCloud Photos for Child Sexual Abuse

Update (2026-06-11): Craig Grannell:

But here’s the thing: the Screen Time system already existed. What Apple announced isn’t so much new features as the refinement of existing ones.

[…]

There will always be edge cases. Apple must get better at understanding them. But giving parents more flexibility strikes me as preferable to the current Screen Time system and blanket government-level bans – or demanding adults constantly prove their age online to do anything.

It remains to be seen whether Apple’s changes will actually hold off any government-level bans.

freediverx (Mastodon):

Apple continues to design child safety features based on guidance from “leading clinical and child development research” and “online safety experts” while neglecting to consult independent security, privacy, and civil rights experts and advocates.

Update (2026-06-16): The Talk Show with Joanna Stern and Nilay Patel had a great segment on parental controls and Screen Time.