In the real world, we have more than a century of experience figuring out how to share the world with children in order to keep them safe while still allowing adults to engage in adult-only activities, particularly those involving sex, violence, and addictive substances.
In 18th and 19th century America, there were essentially no restrictions on children’s consumption of alcohol. However, following the temperance movement’s efforts to publicize alcohol’s harmful effects on families, women, and children, and after the failed experiment of Prohibition, states took on the responsibility of regulating alcohol. Each state eventually passed laws prohibiting the sale of alcohol to those under a certain age, usually 21. This established the principle that enforcement responsibility falls to the bars, liquor stores, and casinos profiting from alcohol sales. The idea that parents alone should manage their children’s access to alcohol would have struck most people as absurd.
Likewise, it will soon seem absurd that we once allowed children of any age to go everywhere on the internet that adults go, doing everything that adults do, without the knowledge or consent of their parents. The year 2025 will be the one where humanity remembers children are different from adults and that they need protection and age-gating in some parts of the digital world.
The dangers are now undeniable. From the dawn of the internet through to 2024, any child who knew how to lie about their age could open an account on nearly any platform used by adults, except for those that require a credit card. This included hardcore pornography sites such as Pornhub, and the now-defunct site Omegle—where children could video chat with strangers, some of whom were naked masturbating men. It also included social media platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok, all of which are full of content that is wildly inappropriate for children, and all of which incorporate design features that harm children in a variety of ways.
Concern among parents and educators is now widespread.
In 2023, a survey on children’s health conducted by the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital showed that the issues that most concern parents—ranked above school violence, drugs, and bullying—were the overuse of smartphones, social media and internet safety. Another 2024 survey of school principals showed that they were similarly alarmed by the effect of smartphones on students, with 88 percent stating that they were making children tired and distracted, and 85 percent believing it was amplifying violence and bullying in schools.
No wonder that, in 2023, a major Unesco report considered the overwhelming evidence that excessive phone use was correlated with lower school performance and poorer mental health, and called for the ban of smartphones from schools. In 2024, France, Italy, Finland, and the Netherlands followed through on those recommendations, banning digital devices in classrooms. In the US, the states of Ohio, Indiana, Oklahoma, Virginia, and Florida have also imposed restrictions on smartphone usage in schools, while the US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for warning labels for social media platforms. Bipartisan legislation addressing these concerns—the Kids Online Safety Act—has also passed the Senate. This new law would, for instance, force tech companies from targeting kids with personalized algorithms designed to hook them.
In 2025, parents will no longer be alone in tackling this problem. They will be assisted by concerned politicians and by phone-free schools. Social media companies, on the other hand, will finally acknowledge—or be forced to acknowledge by juries and legislatures—that they now own childhood, and they bear at least some responsibility for what they are doing to children.
