Restrictions on access to the platforms would come with real costs. But, as Jonathan Haidt of New York University has put it, “The preponderance of the evidence now available is disturbing enough to warrant action.” Some teen users of social media see the problem, too. As one of Meta’s leaked slides put it, “Young people are acutely aware that Instagram can be bad for their mental health yet are compelled to spend time on the app for fear of missing out on cultural and social trends.”

That balance of pressures needs to change. And as the journalist and historian Christine Rosen has noted, preaching “media literacy” and monitoring screen time won’t be enough.

Policymakers can help. By raising the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act’s minimum age from 13 to 18 (with an option for parents to verifiably approve an exemption for their kids as the law already permits), and by providing for effective age verification and meaningful penalties for the platforms, Congress could offer parents a powerful tool to push back against the pressure to use social media.

Reliable age verification is feasible. For instance, as the policy analyst Chris Griswold has proposed, the Social Security Administration (which knows exactly how old you are) “could offer a service through which an American could type his Social Security number into a secure federal website and receive a temporary, anonymized code via email or text,” like the dual authentication methods commonly used by banks and retailers. With that code, the platforms could confirm your age without obtaining any other personal information about you.