I strongly disagree with the new social media law.

Gov. Ron DeSantis recently signed into law a social media bill that states that children under the age of 14 will not be able to have any sort of social media. Children ages 14 and 15 will be able to have an account with parental consent.

This law will affect children negatively in Florida because they may not be able to communicate with friends, contact someone in an emergency, or look up news.

I am a journalism student and when I go to school, I need to go on the internet to find information for a story, so I don’t spread misinformation. If I were to go online and the internet verified my age and I’m not the right age to be on this website, I can’t find the information I need to complete my story.

Also, if I was in an emergency and couldn’t get a hold of any friends or family, I could post something on a social media platform to get help. If I couldn’t go on the internet just because of my age, this could lead me into a very dangerous situation.

Lastly, I live in Clearwater, and all my friends live in St. Petersburg. Without social media I wouldn’t be able to communicate with my friends or our communication would be limited. For example, if I’m working on a school project with a partner and I can’t communicate, we could both get bad grades all because we were too young to be on this site we couldn’t research information for this project.

In conclusion, this should not be a law because this is keeping kids from expressing themselves and taking away the rights of kids because of their age. How much further will age discrimination go?