On Tuesday, Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) proposed new legislation that would prohibit young people from using social media. His bill, stylized the "Making Age Verification Technology Uniform, Robust, and Effective" (MATURE) Act, is extremely and obviously flawed, as Reason's Elizabeth Nolan Brown noted yesterday.
The MATURE Act would require sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube to verify that users are at least 16 years old. That verification process would force social media platforms to scan users' driver's licenses or other forms of government-issued identification, thus necessitating a staggering degree of data collection on the part of the companies. Foes of Big Tech who rightly worry about online privacy in the modern age should consider how proposals exactly like this one would greatly exacerbate that problem.
