By Shaun White and Lexx Thornton
(Source: HBCUNews)
If you live in Virginia, the amount of time your child can be on social media will soon be limited by law. Gov. Glen Youngkin signed an amendment to the Consumer Data Protection Act last Friday that bans minors under the age of 16 from using social media for more than one hour a day on each platform while requiring parents to give verifiable consent if they want to increase or decrease the daily time limit.
It also calls for platforms to take a neutral approach to asking one’s age when they create an account while making sure that data is only used for age verification. Research shows social media can cause harm to young people and can be dangerous to their mental health. Youngkin has even called it a crisis. So the main goal of this law is to limit how much time kids can spendon apps such as TikTok and Instagram. It had overwhelming support from both sides of the aisle in the state’s General Assembly. But there are questions, logistically, about how this is going to work.
“I don’t know if I see it being effective. Honestly, kids are very clever at getting around these and, you know, I totally understand that. Like, what are you going to do if you’re a platform and a 12-year-old, or 14-year-old signs up and says they’re 25, are you going to require ID from everyone who signs up for your platform? Probably not,” said Jen Golbeck, a professor at the University of Maryland’s College of Information. “If you take those platforms away, what they’re going to do is find other platforms that are outside the bounds of what this law covers, that allow them to communicate with their friends and share in very similar ways and so that really limits the impact that this is going to have,” Golbeck went on to say. It does not apply to platforms that are mainly used for email or direct messaging streaming services or news sites.
As for enforcing this, that is something they say they will work out before it is implemented at the beginning of next year. Some other states have heard of what decisions are being made andthose lawmakers are thinking to follow behind.
