For the sake of the public good

Last week, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox committed to signing new legislation that would require social media platforms to verify the age of Utah users and receive parental consent for new users under the age of 18. Gov. Cox expressed his enthusiasm for the bill by pledging to confront all legal challenges head on, adding that “these companies are killing our kids.”

Hyperbole from Gov. Cox? Not quite.

Recent studies have concluded that “greater time spent on online social networking promotes self-harm behavior and suicidal ideation in vulnerable adolescents.” An uptick in depression, anxiety, and suicide among young girls is increasingly connected to “the rise in technology use.” Brain development may also be impeded by social media use.

The reason for these trends is straightforward: diminished in-person social interactions, minimal intergenerational contact, and disrupted sleep patterns are just the beginning. Unrealistic body image and lifestyle expectations coupled with toxic online environments surely contribute to suicidal ideations.

Fraught parental relations, isolation, and social contagion effect have also been linked to what is now called “rapid onset gender dysphoria” and that diagnosis is connected to adolescent suicide.

All that to say, the Utah governor might justly be accused of passion but not hyperbole when it comes to the threat of social media to our children. The relative cost or benefit of a technology can be measured by its effects. In the case of social media, that measurement increasingly cuts against its continued unregulated use. Creative solutions are needed.

Utah’s approach is a start.

Maybe Gov. Cox isn’t exaggerating the problem, but is his law appropriate? Many American Christians may doubt it. Is this not just the latest nanny-state intrusion into private, parental life? Is not this type of action categorically un-American?

Well, historically speaking, such measures have precedent.

Per the Tenth Amendment, and under our federalist structure, states possess a “police power” over domestic life. That is, for the public interest and order in areas not delegated to the federal government for the “general welfare” of the Union.

This state power has been broadly conceived. As the Supreme Court put it in 1890, “The police power includes all measures for the protection of the life, the health, the property, and the welfare of the inhabitants, and for the promotion of good order and the public morals.” The police power is flexible but not boundless. Its exercise must be rational. A public need or “nuisance” must be clearly identified and the means of addressing it must reasonably conform to that end.

On this basis, state legislatures in the 19th and 20th centuries regulated all manner of activity within a rapidly industrializing society—from food processing to intoxicating substances to street sanitation to infectious diseases. “Public nuisance” was the typical category under which these issues were housed.

But a public nuisance and the public health were then defined more expansively than public health and safety in the strict sense.

Public decency and morals were also cognizable under that umbrella. Hence laws limiting economic and recreational activity on Sundays—protection of the common beliefs engrained in our “social nature”— or against indecency, profanity, and obscenity.

Socially, the public good comprehends more than the isolated individual, and more than material, physical harm. It assumes a Christian anthropology: man as body and soul, and as a sociable being. A well-ordered society is required for his flourishing. Understandably, then, the Maine Supreme Court in 1876, upholding smallpox quarantine laws, declared the public welfare the supreme law. “The individual right sinks in the necessity to provide for the public good.” Founders like John Adams concurred.

When a product or activity is determined by the representatives of the people to be a nuisance or harm not only to individuals but to the society generally, legislatures are typically justified in regulating it though not without accountability. As Noah Webster discussed, “If a law is bad and produces general harm, the people may appoint new deputies to repeal it; but while it is a law, it is the act and will of the sovereign power, and ought to be obeyed.”

With this definition, combined with a history of American case law upholding sensible state-level regulation of intoxicating substances and noxious technologies for the sake of the public good, the Utah social media bill is historically conventional. And in the same court records, especial attention has been given to the health and safety of children. Utah’s social media bill also harkens back to a more robust conception of well-being, of human flourishing, of the public good.

Utah’s enthusiasm for empowering parents to combat a causal factor in rapid onset gender dysphoria, suicide, and other mental health problems is contrasted by Democrats like Minnesota Gov.ernor Tim Walz. He insists that any age restriction to sex changes is tantamount to tyranny. Conservative lawmakers have a chance with social media to distinguish themselves not as “culture warriors,” but as sensible statesmen of an older kind.

State-level efforts such as Utah’s should be commended and replicated. As the laboratories of policy, states are the appropriate forum for such regulation. Post-Dobbs, the appetite for such experimentation is being revitalized, most poignantly in the realm of protection of families and children. This comports with our history and the organization of our polity. States have long legislated against public nuisances and health crises.

They should do so again if we are to keep our republic.