Project 2029 announced a new proposal on the group’s Substack called “Kids Over Clicks”, where they propose age restrictions for “additive apps”, banning anyone under the age of 16. The group also proposes new rules for AI chatbots, including a ban on “cosplaying as licensed professionals” and a national standard on banning cellphones in schools.
“For generations, governments have taken steps to keep addictive products like tobacco and alcohol out of the hands of youth,” the new policy proposal says. “And from cribs to car seats to bike helmets, the physical products in a child’s life are required to undergo federal safety tests. It’s time we hold the digital products in their lives to the same standard and implement a comprehensive online safety agenda that puts kids first.”
The group positively quotes Jonathan Haidt, author of the book 2024 anxious generationamong supporters of the proposal. According to Semaphore, other supporters include New Jersey Governor Mickey Sherrill and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten.
While regulation of AI chatbots that try to do the work of psychologists seems reasonable, and there is certainly an ongoing debate about limiting the harm children can do online, it is an odd choice for Project 2029 to come out of the gate more popular among Republicans than Democrats. According to a recent Fox News poll, 74% of Republicans and 56% of Democrats support banning children from social media. It’s also odd to choose a topic that doesn’t elicit the retribution that many on the liberal-left are seeking as President Donald Trump continues to inflict new damage against the US Constitution with each passing day.
The group acknowledges that it can be difficult to enforce restrictions on social media for children, saying that the policy is “no silver bullet” and that children will obviously use VPNs to avoid restrictions. But the group compared it to kids using fake IDs to buy beer. Project 2029 compares its proposal to proposals recently passed in Florida as well as Australia. Recent research from British Medical Journal found that 85% of Australian teenagers had used social media in the past seven days.
Other ideas in Project 2029 include, “privacy-by-default and security-by-design standards that turn off unwanted messaging and recommendation features that exploit child predators,” as well as, “dismantling the surveillance advertising business model that profits by targeting vulnerable teens.” Well-meaning efforts, indeed, but perhaps not the most serious concern as President Trump continues to destroy democratic institutions and bomb countries like Iran in what appears to be a new forever war.
Semaphore, which was the first to report on the Project 2029 proposal, notes that the organization’s executive director is Chad Maisel, who advised President Joe Biden and Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey. Unsurprisingly, Booker is a major supporter of this idea of Project 2029.
Booker is a potential Democratic presidential primary candidate for 2028, and told Semaphore, “This blueprint offers many serious ideas to rein in these harmful practices, promote more responsible technology, and better protect children online.”
Booker is a centrist who often talks a big game against President Trump, but he voted to confirm four of his Cabinet nominees, including Scott Besant as Treasury Secretary, Brooke Rollins as Agriculture Secretary, John Ratcliffe as CIA Director and Marco Rubio as Secretary of State. Booker has also voted to confirm lower-level Trump nominees, including Charles Kushner as US ambassador to France.
Of course, Charles Kushner is the father of Jared Kushner, who is actively negotiating with Iran on behalf of the US government, while reportedly seeking billions of dollars from the sovereign wealth funds of various countries in the Middle East for his private equity firm.
Elected Democrats seem deeply confused about the priorities of the American public, and even though Project 2029 is a relatively small political group, it is kind of an accurate portrayal of where establishment liberals sit right now in the run up to the midterms. The country is currently being looted indiscriminately by Trump’s thugs. And the group’s first policy proposal is about banning social media for children, which, given the existence of VPNs and other easy hacks to bypass age restrictions, would not even achieve its stated goals.
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