I was reading Project 2029’s Substack on a train when a parent across the aisle scrolled past a 10-second clip and frowned. He said, “They want to take this away from my kid,” and I felt the room tilt. You and I both know the grief in that glance—it’s where policy collides with daily life.
I write this as someone who studies how ideas travel from think tanks to dinner tables. You’ll get a clear read on what Project 2029 is pitching, why it matters, and where it misfires.
At a press table in D.C., people passed around a two-page summary of “Kids Over Clicks.” Project 2029’s opening move is unmistakable.
Project 2029 — a small liberal outfit that wants to build a policy playbook for a hypothetical 2028 Democratic White House — launched with Kids Over Clicks on Substack. The plan proposes an under-16 ban on “addictive apps,” new rules for AI chatbots, and national standards to ban cellphones in schools.
The proposal leans on authority names you’ll recognize: Jonathan Haidt gets a nod, and supporters cited by Semafor include Gov. Mikie Sherrill and Randi Weingarten. It’s an attempt to trade moral concern for policy muscle. But the timing and optics are odd: a policy most popular with Republican voters is now fronting a Democratic blueprint.
This feels like a Band-Aid on a broken dam.
At a local PTA, a teacher showed me screenshots of students using VPNs to join restricted apps. Enforcement is front-and-center in the debate.
Project 2029 admits a ban is “not a silver bullet” and that kids will use VPNs, comparing evasive tactics to fake IDs for beer. That’s a fair comparison until you test enforcement at scale. Research in the British Medical Journal found 85% of Australian teens had used social media in the past week even after regulation.
Ask the platforms: Instagram and TikTok are engineered for attention; they ship recommendation systems and private messaging that are hard to neuter with a statute alone. Project 2029 also calls for “privacy-by-default” design, limiting unsolicited messages and recommendation features. Those are sensible product fixes, but they demand cooperation from Big Tech.
Can the government ban kids from social media?
The short answer is: technically possible, politically messy. Polling shows 74% of Republicans and 56% of Democrats back age-restrictions, per a Fox News poll. Popular support and enforceability are two different roads. You can pass a law; you cannot snap your fingers and close a VPN.
At a dinner where Democrats and donors mixed, Cory Booker’s name came up alongside Project 2029’s staff. The party’s center-right contours are visible.
Chad Maisel runs Project 2029; he advised Biden and Sen. Booker in the past. Booker praised the blueprint to Semafor, calling the ideas “serious.” That’s a signal: this is a centrist effort meant to curry establishment credibility. But when Booker has voted to confirm several Trump nominees — from Treasury to the CIA — you see how policy and compromise can tangle.
The political theater also carries an odd subplot: media reports say Jared Kushner has been soliciting billions of dollars for private deals — one estimate put the figure at $2 billion (€1.8 billion) — while advising on U.S. foreign relations. When Democrats spend their opening rhetorical capital on app bans, you have to ask whether the party is matching priorities to the threats at hand.
Will banning social media for kids actually protect them?
Protection is possible in part, but not guaranteed. Limits on targeted ads and design changes for minors would reduce harms. Bans without enforcement are porous. Predator messaging? That’s a product-design and enforcement fight. AI chatbots pretending to be clinicians? Regulation there is straightforward and defensible.
At a campaign war room, staffers map out headlines while the country’s institutions are under stress. The choice of first-offer policy matters.
Project 2029’s agenda includes dismantling surveillance advertising and holding AI to standards that stop chatbots from “cosplaying” as licensed pros. Those are worthwhile. Yet the first proposal from a Democratic-leaning group lands on an issue that conservatives already own politically. The result is a politics-of-placation rather than a politics-of-conflict.
The plan reads as a weather vane in a hurricane.
I won’t pretend there aren’t real harms here — social platforms have engineered attention economies that hurt teens. But you should expect me to ask: when the presidency is in play and democratic institutions are tested, why spend early capital on an unpopular-to-some-but-safe-to-others tech regulation instead of a sharper, larger fight?
You and I both want smart policy that works, not symbols that make good headlines. So ask yourself which battles actually bend outcomes: app design standards and targeted-ad bans, or headline-ready age bans that VPNs will cut through? Which would you press first?