Our kids are experiencing a national epidemic of depression, anxiety, and loneliness. Rates of suicide have skyrocketed, feelings of hopelessness have reached critical levels, and across the country, parents and young people are demanding solutions to this national crisis.
Behind this mental health emergency is social media — its ubiquity, its pervasive data collection, and its addictive design. Nearly 20 years after we first started posting on Facebook walls, Americans are finally turning their attention to the impact social media is having on an entire generation. These companies have been running a national experiment on our kids and the results have been catastrophic.
According to a national poll commissioned by Issue One and our Council for Responsible Social Media, only 7 percent of Americans see social media’s impact on children as more positive than negative. That’s an overwhelming rebuke of Big Tech and the repercussions their platforms are having on children.
There is a solution before Congress right now that lawmakers could pass to make social media safer for our kids. The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) has wide bipartisan support from political leaders including Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), as well as President Biden.
In fact, nearly half of the Senate has joined as co-sponsors of the bill — but Big Tech companies and their army of lobbyists are already coming out in force against this proposal out of fear that it could impact their bottom line. It’s a tried and true playbook for a sector that has successfully avoided any meaningful reforms or regulations since the early days of the internet. With their deep pockets and K Street offices, we’ve allowed these companies to amass exorbitant profits off of our children with little to no oversight. But the time has come to put young people first. Calls for action are growing, and the public is demanding that elected officials listen to the needs and concerns of their constituents instead of powerful special interests.
A majority of youth mental health experts agree that social media is fueling a mental health crisis. Even tech companies’ own internal research shows that their products have created a “perfect storm” of anxiety stemming from their manipulative algorithms. Parents and young people are working to combat the addictive nature of social media, but they can’t do it alone. It’s clear that more needs to be done to put in place responsible safeguards to keep kids safe online. That’s why Congress must step in and take action to bring greater accountability to these Big Tech platforms.
How would KOSA accomplish that? It’ll require the platforms to affirmatively mitigate key, defined harms — depression and suicidal ideaton, eating disorders, addiction, bullying, sexual exploitation, and the sale of illicit drugs to minors — by making changes to their design and the type of content they push to minors without their approval. It’ll give kids and parents more tools to protect private information, disable addictive product features, allow minors to opt out of manipulative algorithmic recommendations, and, most importantly, enable the strongest safety settings by default. Lastly, KOSA will hold online platforms accountable through annual, independent auditing.
In practice, these responsible changes will make the platforms safer for kids, and it’ll give parents more peace of mind knowing these safeguards are in place to improve young people’s wellbeing.
It’s important to note that an earlier version of KOSA introduced in Congress last year drew criticism from many LGBTQ+ organizations who expressed concerns that the bill could be used against young people seeking support and resources online to understand their identities. Members of Congress took this to heart and the new version of KOSA reintroduced earlier this year clarifies language to ensure that LGBTQ+ youth are protected and not restricted from accessing potentially lifesaving information. Further, the bill would go a long way toward making social media platforms safer and healthier for LGBTQ communties, who face some of the highest rates of bullying, depression and suicide.
Despite strong public support for action, however, Big Tech routinely squashes any proposal that may require the platforms to update their business models to prioritize health and wellbeing over profits and ad revenue. Last year, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google alone spent an estimated $250 million on lobbying, advertising, public relations, and campaign contributions to kill various reform proposals. These are the same companies who are today fighting to prevent KOSA from becoming law — and donating hefty sums of campaign cash to politicians speaking out against the need for greater accountability. Don’t be fooled about where their loyalties lie.
More than 200 national, state, and local organizations recently urged Congress to pass KOSA, and a vast majority of Americans from across the political spectrum believe that more needs to be done to increase transparency, ensure privacy, and protect children online. We agree, and so do parents, pediatricians, youth activists and members of Congress.
Together, we can finally put kids before profits. It’s time to pass KOSA.
Alix Fraser is the director of Issue One’s Council for Responsible Social Media, the most prominent group of its kind that’s come together to speak in one voice about the need for responsible social media safeguards.