Entire generations have grown up with the unfiltered internet at this point. What good can possibly come from introducing them now?
I'm opposed to KOSA - I think vague appeals to "preventing harm" are going to be weaponized against queer kids in red states and cause real harm... but again, I think there are far better arguments against it than the "we came out fine" one anti-vaxers and corporal punishment advocates trot out.
It's not so easy to prove harm from internet access.
There are studies that suggest social media can harm adolescent mental health[1] but there are also studies that suggest the magnitude is small enough that we don't really know.[2]
It needs more study (and it sounds like what we really need is more transparency from big tech so that it can be better studied).
For an actual argument against KOSA I would say it doesn't at first glance look like it will target issues that are likely more important: peer pressure, bullying, suicide promotion/romanticization, etc on social media.
Edit: Having spent more time reading the KOSA bill (thankfully linked by another commenter) it does actually appear to try to target the biggest known issues to help minors. Some of the bill seems reasonable.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10476631/
[2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/21677026231207791#:...
In fact it's quite easy to prove that illegal stuff (for example zlibrary) massively improve at least the chances to learn, and improve lives.
To be fair, if you look at statistics around gen z you can see that there definitely are negative consequences of internet access (along with amazing benefits of course).
I don't support this measure or measures like it, but some of action should probably be taking considering the skyrocketing amounts of depression.
I haven't seen any such data. It's hard to separate generation effects and look purely at the effects of internet access in any sort of valid way.
You're probably thinking of studies around social media use. It isn't clear to me that internet filtering will combat any of what makes social media use such a mental health risk for teens.
Yes? Social media use is done through the internet? The vast majority of internet use for young teens is social media use.
I'm not sure what you mean by drawing the distinction between internet use and social media use.
> It isn't clear to me that internet filtering will combat any of what makes social media use such a mental health risk for teens.
I'm not suggesting that the government should be taking action through legal means.
I'm just saying some type of action should be taken.
I'm a really big fan of what Apple did with Screen Time & wish the implementation was better (it's super buggy on my device at least).
Apps that give people better power to control their own internet use is the way IMO.
They're two different terms that mean different things. Just because something is true for squares doesn't mean that it's true for rectangles even though squares are rectangles. Using the correct words matter because otherwise you are spreading misinformation and confusion.