Governor of California, Jerry Brown, passed senate bill number 568 which created a new law for the state of California. The new law is called the “Eraser button.” The point of the law is for teens and minors to remove postings from the internet permanently.

A large majority of teens and young adults use social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Vine on a daily basis. Thousands of teenagers upload pictures, comments, and videos onto websites or applications on their phone. Teens often post things without thinking beforehand. And now, it can really affect a person’s career just by looking at someone’s profile online.

In a 2012 Kaplan survey of college admissions counselors, nearly a quarter said they checked out applicants’ social networking. Of those counselors, 35 percent said what they found — including vulgarities, alcohol consumption and ‘illegal activities’ — negatively affected applicants’ chances of admission, said Huffington Post.

The reason of the law is so that when teens apply for college, jobs, or even scholarships, their online postings will not hurt them. According to www.nola.com, “TechCrunch writer Gregory Ferenstein argues that the law ‘ignores the reality that it’s nearly impossible to delete information from the net: embarrassing photos spread virally, and Internet archives automatically create copies of nearly every piece of information on the web.’”

This law will not go into effect until January 1st of 2015. By this time, California may not be the only state with this law. In addition to the eraser button,  “The new law also prohibits youth-oriented websites or those that know they have users who are minors from advertising products that are illegal to underagers, such as guns, alcohol and tobacco. Websites will not be required to delete re-postings by a third party of the minor’s original post,” said  Huffington post.

However, www.nola.com asks, “Will this law hinder minors in California from cultivating strong online identities, from self-reflecting before posting? That question is almost rendered moot since major social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Vine already allow users of any age to delete their posts — including photos and comments. Thus, in my eyes, this law is pretty toothless, because children aged 13-18 already do all the erasing they want on the sites they use most.”

Do you think this law is effective ? Would you want this law activated in your state?