Many of you got upset when I mentioned the possibility that parents use smart phone software to control the social media usage of their kids.  There was an outcry about how badly those systems work (is that endogenous?).  But that is missing the point.

If you wish to limit social media usage, mandate that the phone companies install such software and make it more effective.  Or better yet commission or produce a public sector app to do the same, a “public option” so to speak.  Parents can then download such an app on the phone of their children, or purchase the phone with the app, and manipulate it as they see fit.

If you do not think government is capable of doing that, why think they are capable of running an effective ban for users under the age of sixteen?  Maybe those apps can be hacked but we all know the “no fifteen year olds” solution can be hacked too, for instance by VPNs or by having older friends set up the account.

My proposal has several big advantages:

1. It keeps social media policy in the hands of the parents and away from the government.

2. It does not run the risk of requiring age verification for all users, thus possibly banishing anonymous writing from the internet.

3. The government does not have to decide what constitutes a “social media site.”

Just have the government commission a software app that can give parents the control they really might want to have.  I am not myself convinced by the market failure charges here, but I am very willing to allow a public option to enter the market.

The fact that this option occasions so little interest from the banners I find highly indicative.