SANTA ROSA, N.M. — The world as I know it has ended. I agree with Ron DeSantis on something.
On March 25, the Florida governor and former mini-Trump wannabe signed into law a state ban for children ages 13 and younger from social media while also requiring 14- and 15-year-olds to get parental consent.
Forget the fact that Florida’s new law will almost certainly be challenged in court, it’s still a step in the right direction. We’re facing a mental health crisis among our children, and social media has a lot to do with it.
That and the COVID pandemic. National test scores are showing a sizable loss in learning during those “remote” years, when children and youth were physically isolated from their peers and their teachers. Turns out, our educators’ best efforts to engage our kids in learning from a distance just didn’t cut it.
According to an assessment called the Nation’s Report Card, in the 2022-23 school year, math and reading were both down to their lowest levels in years — and while educators are using a variety of different approaches to bring them up to speed, it’s unlikely they’ll be caught up by the end of 2023-24.
Beyond these basic and necessary skills, the pandemic messed with their emotional health. Kids need physical connections to learn and grow. They need to be able to play with others their age, preferably outdoors where they can absorb the real world, and their imaginations need to be set free to wander, so to speak, instead of having their playtime completely structured via an electronic program or app. After all, virtual reality isn’t real reality, it’s been made up by somebody else (or a bot). I say, let the kids make up their own fun and games.
Moreover, your “friends” on social media aren’t necessarily real friends. Nor are the algorithms that manipulate you at every turn. Social media — and, really, the internet in general — steers us in unhealthy directions, and it’s particularly unhealthy for kids. It pushes them toward unrealistic expectations when it comes to their bodies and their lives. It also tends to group everyone into solos, or tribes, thereby stunting the mental and emotional growth that comes from viewpoints and lifestyles other than your own.
No wonder our children are struggling with depression, with suicides and thoughts of suicide rising to unprecedented levels. They report being lonely. They worry about a questionable future and feel that things aren’t going to get any better.
To me, this may be the greatest tragedy of them all. When you’re young, you should be filled with hopes and dreams for an exciting and rewarding future. Instead, our young people have visions of a dystopian future, owed in part to our collective unwillingness to face the perils of our existence.
We older folks may be worried about a future run by artificial intelligence and microchips being inserted into our brains, but for our younger generations, the future is far more bleak, with climate change making the earth uninhabitable, mass shootings making a day at school risky, and societal pressures that keep them from becoming the person they want to be.
I think social media use is akin to alcohol consumption — if you can moderate your consumption responsibly, you’ll be OK, but too much and you’ll get addicted. As a result, social media has become the “drug of choice” for a lot of people.
Alcohol isn’t for kids, that’s why we have laws limiting booze to people ages 21 and older. Social media isn’t for kids either — and there oughta be a law.
So you go, Gov. DeSantis. Keep this up and you might just have a future in a post-Trump world of reasonable Republicans.
And maybe even better, you might have latched on to an issue that both Republicans and Democrats can all rally around — getting our kids out of harm’s way.
Tom McDonald owns and operates the New Mexico Community News Exchange and the Guadalupe County Communicator in Santa Rosa. He may be reached at tmcdonald.srnm@gmail.com