The state's new age verification rules ensure that only mature, fully developed brains are legally permitted to be eroded by hyper-optimized social media algorithms.
New York Attorney General Letitia James released final rules this week for the SAFE for Kids Act, mandating that residents verify their age before they are legally permitted to have their frontal lobes turned to absolute mush by a social media algorithm. The new regulations require users to submit identification to access automated feeds or receive post-midnight notifications on platforms like TikTok and Instagram, ensuring the state's youth are protected while preserving the fundamental right of legal adults to rot their own brains.
Under the framework, unverified accounts will be restricted to chronological feeds of users they actually follow, severing them from the machine-learning loops that keep their parents staring dead-eyed into the glow of a smartphone. State regulators emphasized that while children lack the emotional maturity to handle software designed to exploit human psychology, a 38-year-old accountant is perfectly equipped to spend four consecutive hours watching videos of strangers restocking their refrigerators.
We fully support the Attorney General's position that the systemic dismantling of a user's attention span is strictly an adult activity.
The restrictions on post-midnight notifications aim to improve youth sleep hygiene by shifting the burden of late-night digital anxiety entirely onto the adult population. Once a user successfully uploads a valid driver's license, platforms will once again be authorized to wake them at 3:15 a.m. with a push alert about a geopolitical crisis or a targeted ad for a tactical diaper bag.
At press time, millions of middle-aged New Yorkers were reportedly scrambling to scan their passports to ensure their daily diet of subway fight compilations and existential dread would not be disrupted.