They may be looking at the societal level and saying: "I can attempt to teach my kids best practices, but I've learned I sure can't rely on my peers to do the same with their kids...", then feeling like the outcome of that, if left as-is, is societal decline... and then believing that something needs to be done beyond the individual level.
replyIf a business demands you reveal your identity as a condition of use, and you would rather maintain your anonymity, you can choose not to use that business. It's not like these companies are providing essential services necessary for life.
replyHeck, you can't even obtain housing -- which is an essential service -- without having to provide identity in most cases.
Some people would argue though that if the friend group is on Facebook/Discord or whatever, and they aren't going to move off to cater to the person rejecting those services, then those services are at least essential to maintaining those social ties. They decided that giving up their data was a tradeoff worth it.
replyWhat remains to be seen is if the outcome of teenagers becoming social pariahs is really worse than the alternatives.
If not joining social media with friends has been seriously detrimental to teens by making them social pariahs, I'm sure we'd have heard plenty of horror stories by now, as these services have been around for over 20 years. Compare against the horror stories we have heard about those who have gone down the dark roads social media has opened to them that ended in tragedy.
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