Vivek will ban social media below 16 children • Runtime: 1:32
“Free speech is a precondition for truth,” claims Vivek Ramaswamy.
In good company with most politicians, he won’t practice what he preaches.
You see, if you’re 16 or under, then the truth isn’t for you because free speech isn’t for you: The nanny state decides who gets to speak.
The government chooses which truths you’re exposed to.
An articulate and agile orator, Vivek is quite capable of delineating the merits of free speech (to CNBC, for example), but he refuses to make the application universal.
(Just how many more unalienable rights will be relegated to an age check remains to be seen, but Ramaswamy happily sets the precedent.)
While in Iowa on the 2024 presidential campaign trail, the republican presidential contender and Constitutional pretender made clear he wants an outright social media ban for those under 17.
And at the second GOP presidential debate, he stated, “But if you’re 16 years old or under, you should not be using an addictive social media product, period.”
Every parent has the prerogative to make that call for their children, but the government doesn’t have the right to usurp family authority to tell you what you cannot say or what you cannot read!
Vivek’s regime will regulate your speech just as Brandon has done so, and the censorship will require digital IDs for social media where Uncle Sugar—not the parent—chooses what’s appropriate for its children.
Ramaswamy is a fellow Buckeye and doesn’t appear to be a WEF Young Global Leader, but it’s clear he’s no advocate for free speech either. He will happily insert government into the family to place the boot of the state on the necks of parents or guardians.
The best tyrants are those who might otherwise appear quite decent, but in their zeal will gladly rush to impose their personal standards of justice and fairness on everyone, thereby achieving justice and fairness for no one. This is the point of the Constitution: It protects me from your bad ideas. And from your good ideas. (And it insulates you from all of mine.) This is why it chains the power of government, so that no person can force his will—what he thinks are his “good” ideas—on the People. Personal agency and autonomy are sacrosanct.
In a move that showcases his hypocrisy, he accused Beijing of pushing TikTok as “digital fentanyl” to Americans (he says he wants the app banned entirely). Then he joined TikTok himself just to reach the same young adults he would gladly ban from using it!
Yeah, buddy.
His good-ideas-that-we-should-all-be-protected-from don’t stop there.
He has also called for raising the voting age from 18 to 25 (it was “Asian” Americans who persuaded him).
So at 18 we can kill people we do not know, and have the chance to die for a country long before we even know what it means to live for it; at 21 we can get sloppy drunk contemplating the strangers we murdered; but we’ll still have to wait four years longer for the opportunity to stand our ground at the booth and state that our lives are not up for grabs by those who start wars and send others to fight them and then withhold the alcohol useful for numbing the insanity of it all.
Of course, we could pass a mandatory civics exam, or choose to work in an exempt occupation for the opportunity of casting a ballot sooner, but that’s just toying with the demographic that happens to be motivated enough to speak out—the one group that threatens politicians.
Back when women couldn’t vote, the situation was rectified based on gender (part of the innate quality of the humanity of both sexes). Today, Vivek would modify your voting rights based on test scores.
With him, it’s no longer a matter of who you are (a citizen, male or female)—it’s an issue of what you do. Big difference! Raising the barrier of entry like this dilutes the grant of a right with political whimsy.
When will we start acting like this bothers us?
So if you’re naively thinking that young adults should be banned from social media no matter what Mom and Dad think, at least arm yourself with some facts, because the numbers don’t conclusively support the emotionally-charged, preconceived conclusion.
For starters, in the U.S. National Assessment of Educational Progress, eighth grade reading and math scores dipped insignificantly from 2012 to 2020, falling only during the Covid Civil War.
And a cell phone ban in Norwegian middle schools brought whopping improvements in grades of 0.08 standard deviations for girls.
Likewise, a cell phone ban starting in the 2023 to 2024 school year in Florida schools led to very small effects. It is also the case that two years after this ban, Florida test scores fell to their lowest level in 20 years, showing that such bans, even if mildly useful, are not going to set things right.
Parental authority and statistics notwithstanding, in an unsurprising move the Australian government has stepped in to ban social media for the under-16 crowd.
Elon Musk’s 𝕏 became the last of the 10 major platforms to take measures to cut off access to underage teens.
Australia has said the initial list of covered platforms would change as new products emerge and young users migrate.
Companies have told Canberra they will deploy a mix of age inference—estimating a user’s age from their behavior—and age estimation based on a selfie, alongside checks that could include uploaded identification documents.
France and Spain have similar laws, and at least 16 States have age assurance laws for social media access.
A 2019 study scanned the brains of children 3 to 5 years old and found those who used screens more than the recommended one hour a day without parental involvement had lower levels of development in the areas of language, literacy and cognitive skills.
This was hardly surprising. Detrimental affects were observed when 1) excessive screen time was involved; 2) parents were not involved; and 3) the child’s age was most vulnerable.
We recognize that social media can be harmful (for every age group), but it’s a parents’ call. Even if Mom and Dad don’t do a good job managing their children’s screen time (or their own), it’s still their job to manage.
A massive expansion of state authority over who has access to online content is not. The. Answer.
Sorry Vivek, hard pass. 🤦♂️
refs:
• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/vivekgramaswamy_free-speech-is-a-precondition-for-truth-activity-7029607371601555457-uTWr
• https://reclaimthenet.org/vivek-ramaswamy-calls-for-a-social-media-ban-for-under-16s
• https://reclaimthenet.org/vivek-ramaswamy-free-speech-iowa
• https://nypost.com/2023/04/19/dont-use-my-name-vivek-ramaswamy-tells-world-economic-forum/