Written by PTC | Published October 25, 2024
Right now, your representative in Congress is likely back in their home district, campaigning for reelection.
They are probably out meeting with voters, and making promises about what they will do to serve their district if they get sent back to Washington.
If you have an opportunity to talk to your representative between now and election day, make sure to tell them that your number-one priority is protecting your children and grandchildren from the predations of Big Tech. Remind them that they have to answer to you, the voter. Not to Meta. Not to TikTok. Not to Google.
Every day it seems, we get new evidence of the harm to children caused by addictive social media platforms and excessive screen time.
Just a couple of weeks ago, yet another study came out that found more screen time is linked to mental health risks for tweens. Researchers found that the more time kids ages 9-10 spent with screens, the higher the risk for depression, conduct issues and ADHD. In particular, video chat, texting, videos and video games had the highest association with depressive symptoms.
We know that suicide is the second leading cause of death among children and young teens in America. The US Surgeon General has warned about the looming mental health crisis facing America’s youth, and new data shows that U.S. suicide rates rose in 2021, and males aged 15 to 24 experienced the sharpest increase.
We know that Meta’s (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram) own, internal investigation revealed, “We make body image issues worse for 1 in 3 teen girls” and, “Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression.” And that according to Meta’s own internal research, 6% of American users and 13% of British users traced the desire to kill themselves to Instagram.
We know that staffers warned Meta that its subscription feature enabled child exploitation.
We know that TikTok knew exactly how many videos it takes for a teen to become addicted to their platform (260), and that they knew that teens as young as 15 were being paid by adults to strip on TikTok’s “live” feature.
More importantly, Congress knows all this, too. But still, they have failed to pass meaningful legislation to keep kids safe online.
Urge your representative to help pass the Kids Online Safety Act before this legislative session ends in December. We can’t let BigTech win.