The Senate recently passed two children’s online safety bills — the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children’s and Teens Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0) — which, if they become law, would require social media companies, technology companies, and online advertisers to do more to ensure the safety and privacy of technology users under age 17.
According to NBC News, KOSA would require social media companies to better protect users under age 17. It also would require companies to give parents and guardians more control over minors’ use of online platforms and block certain features, such as autoplay. It would require companies to provide users dedicated pages on which to report harmful content.
COPPA 2.0 would boost online privacy protections for anyone under age 17. It would also prohibit advertising targeted to kids and teens and require companies to allow parents and kids to delete information via an eraser button.
The passage of the bills coincides with recent efforts by US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy to shine a light on the dangers of social media and urge Congress to address them.
Last year, Dr. Murthy said children’s declining mental health was the “crisis of our time,” calling out social media as a main driving force of the crisis and publishing a health advisory outlining its potential harms.
In a recent New York Times opinion piece, Dr. Murthy upped the ante, characterizing kids’ current mental health challenges as an “emergency” and calling on Congress to require tobacco-style surgeon general's warning labels on social media.
"A surgeon general’s warning label, which requires congressional action, would regularly remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proven safe," he wrote.
Dr. Murthy’s 2023 advisory inspired the bipartisan Kids Off Social Media Act, which would prevent kids under 13 from accessing social media, prohibit social media from programming algorithms for teens under 17, and give schools the ability to block access to social media.
While it remains to be seen whether any of the bills will become law or if social media platforms will ever implement better safeguards or add surgeon general’s warning labels, there is little doubt that children – and especially teenagers – across our nation are indeed experiencing a mental health crisis that is being exacerbated by the growing use and influence of social media.
The Scope of the Problem
In a recent appearance on NBC's "TODAY," Dr. Murthy said that he had spoken to thousands of parents in recent years and that their number one concern was consistently social media use among children.
"When adolescents spend more than three hours a day on social media, we’re seeing an association with a doubling of risk of anxiety and depression symptoms," he said. "When adolescents spend more than three hours a day on social media, we’re seeing an association with a doubling of risk of anxiety and depression symptoms.”
According to data from the Pew Research Center and Common Sense Media, up to 95 percent of young people aged 13 to 17 say they use social media, with nearly two-thirds reporting they use social media every day and one-third reporting they use it “almost constantly.” These numbers are especially troubling when you consider that the content young people are exposed to on social media can pose mental health concerns.
A study by the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that children and adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media are twice as likely to experience mental health problems, including symptoms of depression and anxiety. This is concerning when you consider recent survey data that shows that teenagers spend an average of 3.5 hours a day on social media. Furthermore, 46 percent of adolescents aged 13 to 17 say that while social media makes them feel worse about their body image, they keep using it.
So why do teens keep using social media?
Because, like cigarettes, social media platforms have been engineered to keep people using them.
While social media addiction is not an officially recognized medical condition and scientists are split as to whether social media is even addictive or not, all the signs are there.
According to Anna Lembke, MD, a psychiatrist and Chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic at Stanford University, young people often start using social media to connect with friends, but wind up continuing to use it because social media can hijack the reward pathways in their brains to keep them using the platforms beyond whatever the initial reason for engagement.
“I think that's the piece that people need to learn more about, that initially we may start out using social media to connect with others, and that's a real positive thing. But because of the way that social media has been engineered, which is expressly to keep us engaged and keep our attention, we can stay on the platform far beyond what our initial reason for engagement was,” Dr. Lembke explained on an episode of the Screenagers Podcast. “We can get to a point ultimately where we're trapped there, and we're trapped there because it is manipulating the dopamine in our reward system to the point where now we have to keep engaging to prevent the comedown, which occurs when we stop, (and) which is exactly why people keep smoking cigarettes or keep drinking alcohol or keep taking a hit of cannabis.”
Tips for Parents
While researchers continue to study the negative effects of social media use, lawmakers argue about proposed legislation to protect our kids, and technology companies drag their feet on implementing safeguards on their products, parents need to act swiftly and decisively to protect their kids from the potential harm associated with social media.
Consider these tips from the US Department of Health and Human Services:
- Create a family media plan to help establish healthy technology boundaries for your home — including social media use.
- Create tech-free zones and encourage your children to foster in-person friendships.
- Teach children and adolescents about technology and empower them to be responsible online participants at the appropriate age.
- Model responsible social media behavior yourself, and work with other parents to help establish shared norms and practices and to support programs and policies around healthy social media use.
- Report all instances of cyberbullying, online abuse, and exploitation.
Click here for more tips on how to protect your child from the potential dangers of digital devices and media. You can also click here for our list of helpful resources for parents and kids related to digital safety, which includes a handy guide for helping you determine when and how to give cellphones to your kids. And check out the kid-safe devices from our partner Troomi Wireless here.