Ben Sperry on Youth Online Safety and the Problem of One-Size-Fits-All Social Media Rules
Legal and regulatory pressure on social-media platforms continues to grow, particularly around youth online safety. A recent Fast Company article referenced arguments made by ICLE Senior Scholar Ben Sperry in Truth on the Market, highlighting concerns that one-size-fits-all restrictions can oversimplify the evidence on harm and ignore important tradeoffs around privacy, access, and online community. Read the full piece here.
“Public debate about social media and youth mental health focuses almost exclusively on potential harms,” wrote the International Center for Law & Economics’ Ben Sperry and Sabrina Pekarovic in a recent essay, arguing that this emphasis downplays the ways platforms can enable self-expression and connect teens to broader communities. They add that treating all teenagers as equally vulnerable oversimplifies the issue and isn’t supported by the evidence. “Blanket bans assume that all teenagers face similar risks and should be treated alike,” they wrote. “The evidence suggests otherwise.”