Colorado Government Forcing Social Media Warning Messages to Minors Sending Government-Mandated Messages to Minors on Social Media Platforms: Colorado’s Unconstitutional Experiment | American Enterprise Institute– www.aei.org “Attention youth: We interrupt your social media experience to bring you this government-compelled, state-sanctioned message to help you ‘understand the impact of social media on the developing brain and the mental and physical health of youth users.’ This message will be repeated.’” That sounds like a far-fetched way to educate minors about alleged and vehemently contested problems with using social media, but something similar might soon become reality in Colorado unless a judge issues an injunction in NetChoice v. Weiser. Compelling private entities to host disputed messages they disagree with––NetChoice calls Colorado’s statements “state-compelled opinions”––raises profound First Amendment problems, but that’s what the statute in Weiser seemingly does. The US Supreme Court has “held time and again that freedom of speech ‘includes both the right to speak freely and the right to refrain from speaking at all.’” It recently added that the government generally “may not compel a person to speak its own preferred messages.” Given this principle against government-compelled expression, the better––and constitutional––method for addressing Colorado’s frets about minors’ social media usage is for the state to run its own educational and advertising campaigns––ones that don’t co-opt platforms to do the hard work for it.
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