CINCINNATI — A new state law limiting the age of when you can create a social media page is set to go into effect, but teens and parents have mixed feelings about whether it’ll work.
Between checking social media in their down time and making videos for social media, they said they couldn’t imagine not having it.
“I’m just on my phone scrolling for hours and hours,” said 14 year old Maxberry.
Choates, 18, said the teenagers would be bored without social media.
All three said they’ve all had pages on social media for years.
“I got Instagram at 11 or 12,” said Brown-Ward, 14.
Brown-Ward said they got Snapchat at 10 years old.
“I got Facebook first, but just like there’s a fun side of social media, there’s also a dark side, a really dark side,” Choates said, “I know somebody who got very explicit photos posted of them, and it affected them really bad.”
That’s why now they said kids should be at least their age before logging on to their own social media page.
“I think kids like us, your parents, should allow you to make mistakes on social media,” Brown-Ward said.
But lawmakers want to set the age even older. There’s a new state law set to go into effect in January that would make it so kids have to be at least 16 to get most social media pages or have parents’ permission.
“It takes some of the pressure off the parent, not that I want the laws to parent for me because I could just say ‘No, you can’t have it,’ but that would help with the masses have it,” Rashanna Freeman said.
Freeman, a high school teacher and parent to a 13 year old with a TikTok, says she sees the effect social media has in the classroom, and when her own daughter was bullied on social media.
“It was definitely a hard situation to see her going through that and for it to be so bad we pulled her out of her school,” Freeman said. “It was major.”
It was also a difficult situation when April Austin, a mother of five, checked in on her son’s Facebook page.
“I just saw a sexual scene on my son’s page,” Austin said. “I’m, one, disgusted, and very angry because you want to allow your children to participate in social media, but you don’t want them to be exposed to someone else’s body parts.”
Either way, these teens said some are going to find a way to log on. They advise children to ask your parents first.
Parents will have to be verified with an ID to give their child consent to be one social media.
Lawmakers said if social media companies don’t put on the restrictions by then, they could face hefty fines.
For more information about the new requirements, click here.
