Social media must be off-limits for children

After about 20 years of social media platforms operating without any legal or moral constraints, the evidence is overwhelmingly clear that social media is toxic for our children.

Much like the tobacco companies 75 years ago (Big Tobacco was fully aware of the health dangers of their products, but concealed their findings for decades), today’s tech conglomerates have hidden the truth of the addictive nature of their algorithms upon our children.

The recent release of internal emails and studies from these social media companies has revealed that they were well-aware of the danger that their algorithms pose to young people, whose developing brains are susceptible to the non-stop messaging that spews from their platforms.

However, as far as these rapacious social media companies are concerned, our children serve merely as profit centers for them. Their business model is simple and predatory: the longer a child remains tethered to the screen, the more data is harvested and the more revenue is generated.

It is clear that the social media companies lack any sense of morality and they never will self-regulate — there’s simply too much money at stake to ever prioritize child safety over shareholder returns.

The global community has finally begun to fight back. Australia recently enacted a law that prohibits children under 16 from holding social media accounts on major platforms. Other nations, including Spain, France, and Portugal, have followed suit with similar bans.

Even China has recognized the danger that social media platforms pose to children and has implemented a 40-minute daily limit for children under the age of 14.

The time has come for Congress to take similar action by modifying Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. For too long, this law has protected online platforms, websites, and internet service providers from liability for content posted by third-party users.

While Section 230 was intended to foster internet growth, it was never meant to provide a legal shield to companies that knowingly design products to be addictive and harmful.

One generation of American children already has been scarred by the ill-effects of social media. We have seen the spikes in depression, anxiety, and self-harm that track perfectly with the rise of the smartphone. Congress needs to take action now — not just to regulate content, but to mandate a minimum digital age of consent — for the benefit of future generations. Our children’s mental health is not a commodity. It is time that our laws remove our children’s fingers and eyeballs as profit centers for Big Tech.