The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt

Author:Jonathan Haidt [Haidt, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2024-03-26T00:00:00+00:00

2. Raise the Age of Internet Adulthood to 16

In the late 1990s, as the internet was becoming a part of life, there were no special protections for children online. Companies could collect and sell children’s data without the knowledge or consent of their parents. In response, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission recommended that Congress enact legislation requiring websites to obtain parental consent before collecting personal information from children. Representative (now senator) Ed Markey, from Massachusetts, drafted such a bill, and he defined a child as anyone under the age of 16, for data collection purposes. The e-commerce companies of that era objected, and they teamed up with civil liberties groups who were concerned that the new bill would make it harder for teens to find information about birth control, abortion, or other sensitive topics.[20]

In the negotiations over the bill, a compromise was reached that the age would be lowered to 13. That decision had nothing to do with adolescent brain development or maturity; it was just a political compromise. Nonetheless, 13 became the de facto age of “internet adulthood” for the United States, which effectively made it the age of internet adulthood for the world. Anyone who is 13, or at least says they are, can be treated as an adult for the purposes of data acquisition. As Senator Markey later said, “It was too young and I knew it was too young then. It was the best I could do.”[21]

In addition to setting the age too low, the bill, known as COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act), failed to impose any obligation on companies to verify anyone’s age. They were only required to avoid collecting data from users when they had direct evidence that the user was under 13. The bill was enacted in 1998, when the internet was a very different place than it is today, and there has been no subsequent action by Congress since then (although several bills are being considered in 2023, including an update of COPPA that would raise the age back to 16).

By specifying 13 as the age of adulthood, COPPA sent a signal to parents that the government thinks 13 is an appropriate age for children to be opening accounts and using these services. It sounds like the “PG-13” by which the Motion Picture Association tells parents that a movie is appropriate for a 13-year-old to see without a parent. But readiness to see a movie is very different from readiness to exercise self-control and make wise choices while being subjected to the addictive attention-extracting techniques used by powerful companies.

What is the right age of internet adulthood? Note that we are not talking about the age at which children can browse the web or watch videos on YouTube or TikTok. We’re talking only about the age at which a minor can enter into a contract with a company to use the company’s products. We’re talking about the age at which a child can open an account on YouTube or TikTok and begin

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