Let's say I really wanted to reduce the number of children who die in car accidents. Car accidents are really bad, right? Nobody disagrees about that. And it would be much better for both the environment and the kids' health if they spent more time walking, or taking the bus. Perfectly reasonable. More cars off the road, safer roads, fewer kids getting hurt, healthier kids. A win-win!
Therefore, let's ban children from traveling by car and require all cars to have a scanner on the door that scans the government ID of everyone who gets in the car to make sure no kids are in there. After all, kids get hurt in car accidents all the time! We need to ban this right away!
The thing we're about to learn in this current wave of social media bans is just how much of the infrastructure of our society we have allowed to be captured by a handful of social media companies. And thus, how much of the world we are shutting a whole demographic out of by banning it for them. If we decide as a society that we want to do this, we can't do it without building the equivalent of a robust public transit network first.
Sure, some kids would start walking to school. But some would just be stuck at home. Forever.















