Do Social Media Bans Work? + A Conversation About A.I. Consciousness + Tool Time
with Kevin Roose & Casey Newton
10 Jul 20266 min read1h 10m
TL;DR
Australia's social media ban showed 85% of teens still using platforms 90 days in, but Casey Newton argues this mirrors early seatbelt non-compliance — not proof of failure. Meanwhile, the US Supreme Court's decision not to block Texas's App Store Accountability Act opens the door for state-level age verification laws nationwide, with Pew finding 6 in 10 US adults now support banning social media for under-16s. Anthropic's new 'JSpace' interpretability research into Claude's internal processing is pushing AI consciousness from fringe topic to serious scientific inquiry.
Key Moments
Casey Newton
“When you look at what Australia's law actually requires, the requirement is that platforms take reasonable steps to try to keep kids off of these platforms. It does not dictate a particular method.”
Casey explaining why the 85% of teens still using social media stat doesn't necessarily mean the Australian ban is a failure
“The innovation that Height and his collaborators make is they come along and they start looking at all of the teens that have been groomed and sexed and lured into danger and scammed. And they're realizing that millions of teens are making these reports every single year.”
Casey distinguishing Haidt's direct-harm framing from population-level mental health studies that show small or no effects
“Very early after the passage of a law requiring seat belts in cars in this country, Kevin, adherence to seat belts was about 15%. Pretty bad. That was not in and of itself an argument that seat belts did not work. It was just an argument that you needed more time, right?”
Casey making an analogy to argue that low early compliance with social media bans doesn't mean bans are futile
“I continue to have several like worries about this whole pursuit of social media bans. Not that I don't think it's like an experiment worth running, but you know, I've talked before about like my whole sort of feeling that this is kind of fighting the last war cuz like the real action is on is in AI right now and like we should be trying to regulate that and social media just feels kind of obsolete.”
Kevin raising his skepticism that social media bans are the right regulatory priority given AI's rise
“Phenomenal consciousness is more about feeling. And so normally when people are talking about welfare and moral status and ethical responsibilities, they have phenomenal consciousness in mind. The question is, does it feel like something to be this system? And in particular, might the system be capable of having feelings and emotions like pleasure, pain, happiness, suffering, satisfaction, frustration that feel good or bad?”
Jeff Sibo defining phenomenal consciousness for listeners at the start of the AI consciousness discussion
Hard Fork is the New York Times tech podcast hosted by Kevin Roose and Casey Newton. The show covers the biggest stories in technology, from AI to social media to the future of the internet. In this episode they also host Jeff Sibo, associate professor at NYU and director of the Center for Mind, Ethics and Policy.
Takeaways
1
Teens submitting Thomas Edison photos to fool age-checks John Herman's New York Magazine story documented Reddit users advising teens to submit black-and-white historical photos to trick age verification systems. This illustrates how 'reasonable steps' compliance by platforms remains trivially circumventable without hard government ID requirements.
2
No parental controls exist for major AI chatbots Kevin notes there is effectively no standard parental control layer on any major chatbot that would let parents allow vibe coding or homework help while blocking personal or emotional conversations. This regulatory gap exists even as social media age-restriction debate dominates policy attention.
3
US Supreme Court greenlit state-level social media age laws The Supreme Court declined to block Texas's App Store Accountability Act, which requires parental consent for minors to download apps. This effectively gives other states a legal template — Utah, Louisiana, and Alabama have already passed similar laws, and California's version takes effect January 1st next year.
4
85% of Aussie teens still online 90 days post-ban University of Newcastle researchers found that more than 85% of Australian teens reported using social media roughly three months after the ban took effect. Casey argues this reflects typical early non-compliance rather than proof of failure, comparing it to seatbelt adoption rates post-mandate.
5
Haidt reframes harm as direct, not statistical The debate between Jonathan Haidt and researcher Candace Odgers has shifted: while population-level studies show small or no mental health effects from social media, Haidt's camp focuses on millions of individual reports of grooming, sextortion, and scamming. Casey argues this direct-harm lens is more persuasive than aggregate effect sizes.
6
Social media bans solve collective action, not just access A key Haidt argument Casey endorses: many teens say they'd prefer less phone time but feel compelled because peers are always online. A ban removes the social pressure collectively, not just individually — meaning its value isn't only about keeping kids off platforms but about changing peer norms simultaneously.
7
Anthropic's JSpace hints at Claude's unconscious processing layer Anthropic interpretability researchers discovered what they call JSpace — an internal workspace in Claude named after the mathematical Jacobian concept — that appears analogous to human unconscious cognition. The lab explicitly stopped short of claiming this proves sentience, but the finding is driving AI consciousness from fringe speculation into serious empirical research.
8
Pew: 6 in 10 US adults support under-16 social media ban New Pew Research published last week found that nearly 60% of US adults support banning social media for those under 16 — making it the majority position nationally. Casey predicts Congress will move on a federal ban once roughly half to three-quarters of states have enacted their own laws.