A new bipartisan federal proposal introduced in the US Senate today would set a national age limit for using social media, effectively banning anyone 12 and under from using the apps many children currently spend hours a day on. “I tend to be, I guess, a little bit suspicious of hard and fast rules, because I'm not sure that they work and because I sort of think that parents and kids should have the freedom to decide what’s right for their family,” Smith says. “I thought that that’s an age at which kids are starting to have a little more independence,” Hawley says of why he chose that age