WASHINGTON – Efforts to get children away from their cellphones are increasing in the U.S. Congress, despite intense lobbying by social media giants and resistance from those who fear a violation of the First Amendment right to free speech.
Lawmakers want to set a minimum age for accessing social media and impose greater responsibility on social media companies and their algorithms, while also giving parents more control over their children’s online protection.
A bipartisan coalition of U.S. Senators led by Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Brian Schatz of Hawaii, a up-to-date version of a draft law was presented This would set a minimum age of 13 for access to social media platforms.
It would also block the use of “addictive algorithms” on social media platforms for under-17s and restrict the use of social media in schools. At the end of April, the bill was sent to the Senate Committee on Trade, Science and Transportbut the committee said it had no marking date.
TikTok divestment
Important social media platforms such as Tick Tock and Meta’s Instagramhave been criticized for their algorithms that can influence Mental health of children and adolescents.
At the end of April, President Joe Biden signed a law that forces TikTok to divest from its Chinese parent company ByteDance within the next year or face a possible ban in the United States. The law – embedded in a massive development aid package – arose primarily from privacy and national security concerns. Both the app and its parent company have filed suit to Block the potential ban.
In response to parents’ dissatisfaction, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized to the distraught family members of the social media victims during a hearing in January. Senate Judiciary Committee about child safety on the Internet.
But Meta and ByteDance have also invested heavily in their lobbying efforts, according to an April report from the group. Problem One.
The non-partisan non-profit found that Meta spent a whopping $7.64 million on lobbying in the first quarter of 2024, having one lobbyist for every eight members of Congress. The same is true of ByteDance, which spent $2.68 million and had one lobbyist for every 11 members of Congress.
Draft bill on online safety for children
Other bipartisan efforts in Congress also target social media companies’ algorithms to ensure children’s online safety.
Senators Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, and Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee, introduced a up-to-date version of their bill, the Children’s Online Safety ActIn June 2023The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation approved the bill, and it was placed on the agenda in December. Senate legislative calendar.
Part of the revised measure, which includes support for over half of the US Senatewould require platforms to give minors the ability to “protect their information, disable addictive product features, and opt out of personalized algorithmic recommendations” and allow certain parental controls to “detect harmful behavior.”
The bill would also provide a platform for parents and teachers to report such behavior. Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives submitted an accompanying draft in April. A House Subcommittee on Energy and Commerce forwarded the bill to the full committee at the end of May.
Concerns about freedom of expression
However, attempts to either restrict or limit the interaction of minors on social media have faced objections related to a possible violation of the First Amendment.
“Any government restrictions on what we can say or see online are likely unconstitutional,” said Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonprofit that advocates for free speech rights.
Terr said many of these bills represent “an unconstitutional trifecta”: “They threaten the right of platforms to disseminate speech, the right of minors to access legal content, and the right of adults to speak or access content anonymously because they may have to reveal information about their identity to prove their age.”
“Parents are best placed to set rules for their children’s use of social media, and the government should not usurp parental authority,” Terr said. He also noted that “one-size-fits-all approaches don’t work” when it comes to laws designed to regulate social media or expression in general.
“Another problem with these laws is who decides what is ‘appropriate’? These laws are vague and the problem with that is that they give the government a lot of discretion to simply put in its own subjective decision about what it thinks is appropriate and substitute its judgment for the decision of private platforms and the people who use them,” he added.
Children’s health warnings
In 2023, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy will publicly warned that while more research is needed to understand the impact of social media and there is some evidence to suggest potential benefits for children and teenage people, there is “amongst other things evidence to suggest that social media can also pose significant risks to the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people”.
Dr. Jenny Radesky, a developmental and behavioral pediatrician and associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Michigan School of Medicine, told States Newsroom that the science is clearest when it comes to sleep.
“When children use media for long periods of time, when it disturbs them and makes them more alert or unresponsive, or when it is consumed in the evening hours – all of that leads to poorer sleep, and sleep is so important for children’s development,” said Radesky, chairman of the Council on Communications and Media at the American Academy of Pediatrics. The AAP is one of the over 200 organizations Support the Kids Online Safety Act.
“We don’t want legislation that somehow regulates the content that can appear online, because that’s a real First Amendment problem. So you don’t want a law that says this kind of content can’t appear in children’s feeds. But we do want some accountability,” Radesky said.
Radesky said much of the work to ensure children have secure experiences online falls to parents. “It’s exhausting and we all don’t know how to do it,” she said.
She said parents should feel free to talk to their members of Congress and say, “Listen, raising kids is hard enough right now. Please do something to clean up the digital ecosystem so it’s easier and the default experience for kids is more toward health and positivity and less of the risks that have been documented over the last five to 10 years.”
Telephones in the classroom
There are also efforts at the state level to keep children away from their cell phones in the classroom. Several states have passed or introduced laws that prohibit students from using their cell phones during class. Stateline reported March.
Last year, Florida became the first state to require public schools to prohibit students from using cell phones in class.
Indiana has also taken similar measures. Governor Eric Holcomb signed a bill Earlier this year, a law was passed requiring schools – with some exceptions – to ban the use of wireless communication devices during classes.
Some members of Congress, including Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Tim Kaine of Virginia, have also called for concrete studies on the use of cell phones in schools.
The two Legislation introduced in November, which would require U.S. Department of Education “to conduct a study on the use of mobile devices in elementary and secondary schools and to establish a pilot grant program to enable certain schools to create a school environment without mobile devices.” In November, the bill was sent to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
