Your professor is teaching a class on media studies. Write a post responding to the professor's question. Express and support your opinion and contribute to the discussion in your own words. An effective response has at least 100 words.
Dr. Leonard Achebe
Several countries are considering laws that would require social media companies to verify the age of every user and to bar those under sixteen. Supporters say the harms to adolescents are now well enough established to justify it. Opponents argue that verification means identifying everyone, that determined teenagers will get around it, and that the same effort spent on design rules would help more. Should governments require age verification on social media? Why or why not?
Priya
I support it. We already accept age limits on driving, alcohol and gambling, and nobody argues that those are worthless because some people break them. The point of a legal age is not that it is perfectly enforced. It is that it shifts the default and puts the burden on the company rather than on a fourteen-year-old and their parents.
Tomas
The comparison does not hold. Buying alcohol happens in one place at one moment, and a shopkeeper can check a card. Verifying age online means every adult proving who they are to a private company before speaking, which is a large change to how public conversation works, made in order to solve a problem the companies could reduce by changing their own recommendation systems.