How a National Digital ID System Could Improve the Internet
Late last month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law H.B. 3, a bill that will forbid children under 14 from signing up for social media accounts and require children ages 14 or 15 to obtain parental consent to access social media. The bill, along with others being considered at the state and federal levels, comes in response to growing concerns about the possibly detrimental effects of social media on children’s mental health.
The science on these questions is far from settled, and laws like Florida’s will inevitably face constitutional challenges on First Amendment grounds. These debates will continue to play out, and they’re worth having. But Florida’s regulation has been signed into law, and another, more pressing question will crop up if it goes into effect on January 1, 2025, as written: How will the government enforce it?
Doing so will inevitably require validating users’ online identities, a process that, given current technological realities, will either be ineffective or raise a host of privacy concerns. Similar issues exist with regulators’ efforts to crack down on deepfakes, bot-driven misinformation networks, and other forms of online identity fraud.
