Audio By Carbonatix
This post is in response to Smoking, Social Media Bans Are a Warning Sign for Britain
By Corinne Cowan
Writing against British bans on cigarettes and social media for young people — although the former will automatically expand to include every Briton — Corinne Cowan writes,
The Western tradition has historically understood that freedom comes with the moral responsibility to choose the right thing. Freedom asks that free individuals take up the mantle of choice for themselves. It’s a heavy burden, but a deeply necessary one. The responsibility of choice is meant to habituate good moral conduct. It turns boys into men and men into citizens.
This is true, but it is only a partial truth. The Western tradition has also allowed for a limited but real governmental role in helping parents form the moral character of their children. And this remains in principle uncontroversial today even if the contours of that role are up for debate, as I wrote a few months ago:
Society doesn’t let parents assess their children’s maturity and competence and then set individualized ages for buying liquor, cigarettes, or guns, going to casinos, or driving cars. Even places that have legalized marijuana make exceptions for kids. Parents can’t legally opt their children out of seat-belt laws or send them to work in factories. We use zoning laws to keep strip clubs away from schools and playgrounds, instead of asking parents to issue stern warnings about how to walk home. “Most States,” the Supreme Court observed last year in a Texas case, “require age verification for in-person purchases of sexual material.”
These policies aid parents in multiple ways: letting them monitor their children less intensively, encouraging the formation and maintenance of helpful social norms and solving collective-action problems. (“Justin’s mom lets him smoke!” is, mercifully, not something parents have to deal with.) . . .
The [U.S.] has already, in principle, acceded to age-based regulations on the internet. They have been in federal law since 1998, restricting how websites can collect personal information from children under 13. Many social media sites adopted that age limit in their stated policies in response to the law. What reformers are proposing is raising the age and adding teeth to the restrictions.
Whether a proposal for a government policy to protect children is wise or prudent will depend on the particulars. But it can’t be an argument-ender to say that any such proposal violates parents’ rights to raise their children.
