From Socrates to social media, society has always worried about protecting the young. But the latest ruling about Meta and YouTube overlooks the upsides of free speech.
By Jacob Mchangama and Jeff Kosseff
In 399 BCE, Socrates was put on trial before a jury of some 500 of his fellow Athenians. The indictment accused him of impiety and added, “Socrates is…also guilty of corrupting the youth.” Despite the Athenian democracy’s commitment to free and equal speech, Socrates was found guilty and sentenced to death.
Two and a half millennia later, democracies are still deeply concerned about dangerous ideas corrupting the youth. This time, the target isn’t dangerous philosophy but an increase in teen mental-health issues blamed on social media. Over the past year, a global tsunami of laws and bills has been enacted or proposed that ban minors from social media platforms or require age verification for accessing certain types of content. This week a Los Angeles jury delivered a $6 million verdict against Google’s YouTube and Meta in a lawsuit filed by a woman who said that her childhood social media use led to an addiction that impacted her mental health and that the companies were to blame.
As in ancient Athens, those most vocal about the need to protect children from corrupting influences insist that such drastic measures constitute a defense of rather than an attack on democratic values and social cohesion. But such measures, though well-intentioned, carry serious implications for the freedoms of speech and access to information, as well as the right to privacy, for children and adults alike.
Among the most influential proponents of age-verification laws is New York University professor Jonathan Haidt, author of the bestselling book “The Anxious Generation,” which has had an enormous impact on the movement to protect children from social media. Haidt says that the “phone-based childhood” has resulted in an “international epidemic of adolescent mental illness” and that “Social media use is a cause of anxiety [and] depression.” Haidt’s book was the direct inspiration behind Australia’s regulatory measures that culminated in a pioneering federal law banning children under 16 from social media, which came into effect in December 2025 and now serves as a global template.
But substantial questions still surround the evidence and call into question whether legislation is an effective cure with no serious side effects.
Even if the harms are as devastating as some argue, it doesn’t necessarily follow that blanket bans will effectively mitigate these harms. New laws could lead to unintended consequences for other vital democratic interests that may outweigh uncertain benefits.
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Jacob Mchangama is the Founder and Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech. He is also a research professor at Vanderbilt University and a Senior Fellow at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).
Jeff Kosseff is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow for The Future of Free Speech. He writes about online speech, the First Amendment, and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.