What if social media were treated like tobacco?
It might sound like a fantasy, but it’s closer to reality than you might think. Last year, Australia became the first country to ban social media for minors. The law passed the Australian parliament by an overwhelming margin and was wildly popular among Australian adults.
Taking a cue, the European Union released an app enabling age verification on social platforms, while a handful of European nations are mulling Australia-style bans. The Canadian government is “very seriously” considering mandatory age limits, while even here in America, the Massachusetts state house recently voted to ban social media for children under 14.
We don’t know how many of these proposals will become law; we also don’t know how effective the Australian experiment will be. But one thing is clear: the age of social media is over. The dream of connecting the world that once catalyzed Silicon Valley has crashed into regulatory stigmas and concerns over harm to children.
Technology is entering a new era. The United States is well-positioned to lead this next generation of tech, just as it did with social media. But that leadership will have to come not just from Silicon Valley but from Washington policymakers.
Doomsayers have been predicting the death of social media for decades, but this time it appears to be real. Not only are regulators moving in, users are moving on—time spent on social media platforms peaked in 2022 and has since fallen by nearly 10 percent.
Between just 2023 and 2024, X lost 33 million users and close to 14 percent of its revenue. Facebook has been declining for years, while even trendy TikTok has seen a dip in the time users spend on its app.
That China, which operates TikTok, takes extreme measures to keep its own teens off social media, should tell us everything we need to know. Even plugged-in Gen Z has at best a love-hate relationship with these platforms, with nearly half of Zoomers saying they wish TikTok was “never invented.”
All the way back in 2021, Mark Zuckerberg saw which way the wind was blowing and reinvented Facebook as Meta. His virtual reality “metaverse” didn’t work out as planned, but Meta today has fully pivoted away from social media and into AI.
This is the new future of tech: artificial intelligence, along with other products like cloud computing and semiconductors. Yet while America dominated the social media age, this new generation is seeing much stiffer global competition.
Take semiconductors, which are vital to everything from smartphones to medical equipment to cars. More than 60 percent of the world’s semiconductors and 90 percent of the most sophisticated chips are made in Taiwan.
The United States invented the semiconductor, yet today we only produce about 10 percent of these vital chips. China produces as much as double that while actively threatening to invade semiconductor-rich Taiwan.
Washington has been working to close this gap with measures like the 2022 CHIPS Act, which provided incentives for domestic semiconductor manufacturing. But the U.S. still lags badly behind. We need a comprehensive strategy if we’re to make America a semiconductor leader once again.
Likewise, on AI. The United States does better here, but still faces challenges from an aggressively upstart China. A Stanford report released this month warns that China has “nearly erased” America’s lead on artificial intelligence while Chinese conglomerate Huawei has become a dominant AI global player.
Washington has made some smart moves here.
For example, last year, the Trump administration approved a merger between Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Juniper Networks, which will create a new American AI powerhouse with the scale and know-how to compete with Huawei.
In Congress, radical Democrats continue to challenge the Trump administration on the wisdom of this merger. No surprise there – they fight anything that has Trump’s rubber stamp on it.
But as Jack Posobiec has argued when discussing this case, the president’s brand of populism recognizes that big – while often bad – isn't always bad. Mergers that benefit consumers and America’s national security interests should be seen as a blessing, not a curse. By undercutting Huawei and the Chinese Communist Party’s predatory global AI ambitions, this one does both.
While this is a great first step, more pro-competitive actions to get the U.S. ahead in the AI race are needed.
Beijing is providing extensive guidance funds for AI developers while stealing U.S. intellectual property. Washington needs to acknowledge that China, in particular, has made AI competition a public-sector matter as well as a private-sector one, and respond accordingly.
America can’t become a technology has-been, the country that gave the world hashtags and Facebook friends only to fade from relevancy. Let’s recognize we’ve got stiffer competition this time around and make sure we lead the way.
Reynold Schweickhardt is a former chief information officer at the Government Publishing Office (GPO), a former director of technology policy at the House of Representatives, and a former senior advisor for technology at the General Services Administration (GSA).
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