There's a collective action problem here, though. Some parents are willing to do the hard thing and tell their kid no over and over and over. Most aren't. The result is that kids don't hang out in person any more and so the only social outlet left is digital, which makes the decision to ban it at the family level even harder because you may actually do more harm than good by forcing your child to not participate with his friends.
If there's widespread agreement that social media is dangerous and yet widespread difficulty coordinating a response among parents, isn't that exactly what the government is for?
Kids will quickly learn that if their parents say "yes", they can get on social media, and so parents will still have to say "no" over and over again. The only difference is now we need to make sure our government papers are in order before we participate in the most important communication forum of our time.
We can apply this to everything. No one is trying to raise the age of candy and soda purchase to 16. Although we know that having access to these things drastically impacts children's health. Fast food too.
Like it's the literal job of a parent to tell their kids no. Over and over and over again. So instead of parents teaching healthy habits easy with something a child will not be a le to avoid as an adult, we'll just unleash them on them right when failure is high impact because some parents are lazy and we're not willing to have public service campaigns anymore.
Or really want this is is one more step to a de-anon'd internet, where everyone's speech can be controlled.
You don't have to do something all the way, for it to be that thing. A hop still qualifies as a jump. Demanding adults ID-verify their age is still fascism.
If there's widespread agreement that social media is dangerous and yet widespread difficulty coordinating a response among parents, isn't that exactly what the government is for?