Parents and lawmakers are beginning to realize the devastating effects social media addiction has on their children. Depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation and hospital visits are experiencing historic spikes, especially among adolescent girls.

But other countries are fighting back. Utah just passed a social media regulation law that gives parents more rights to monitor their children’s social media. Additionally, the law requires social media companies to age-verify users for access, establishes digital stay-at-home orders, and allows platforms to use algorithmic designs and features that make children addicted to their products. prohibited.

Parents in Arkansas have reason to celebrate, too. In April, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders passed the Social Media Safety Act. The law requires social media platforms to obtain age verification from their users and to ensure explicit parental permission for users under the age of 18 to open accounts. The law also requires social media companies to obtain explicit consent from a parent or guardian if anyone under the age of 18 opens an account. (Related: Michael Mashera: Wikipedia Joins Wake Up War of Words)

According to Gov. Huckabee Sanders, the purpose of the law is simple and direct: to “protect our children.” There is certainly much to admire in this law. This, like Utah’s proposal, represents another bipartisan proposal aimed at protecting children from Big Tech’s addictive and sometimes deadly social media services.

Unfortunately, there is one big hole in Arkansas law. That doesn’t apply to all tech companies. The law certainly includes Meta and its subsidiaries Facebook and Instagram, but excludes Amazon’s Twitch and Google’s YouTube.

but why? Are Twitch and YouTube services different from other social media companies? Are they more secure than, say, Instagram, TikTok, or Snapchat?

unlikely.

First, these are all “social media” platforms, either by the law’s own definition or, frankly, by their use of recognizable terms. The law defines social media companies as “online forums.” [allows users] to: create a public profile…; upload or create posts and content to view [other’s] post or content…; and interact with others [users]…. This describes Meta’s platform as well as Google’s and Amazon’s.

Additionally, Twitch and YouTube are just as harmful to children as other social media apps. Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok all use the same psychology-based techniques to keep kids engaged and grow their market share. Addiction is very important to your bottom line. Because addiction keeps kids glued to apps and ready to embrace highly sophisticated advertising technology. To make matters worse, they’re all equally lax in policing child-harmful content, including the children’s service where it’s the worst. The mother reported that it was her YouTube Kids that was distributing videos teaching children how to commit suicide. Horrifyingly, it took several days for the tech giant to remove the subversive content after several mothers brought this to Google’s attention.

Targeting a set of companies, even if they are guilty, and exonerating a similarly guilty set is against protecting children. It just coaxes children onto those platforms, which again leads to the exact same harm. Is it really a win to save kids from Instagram and get them to YouTube?

Given the developments in Arkansas, expect to develop a patchwork of states where Google is exempt here and Meta exempt there, leaving loopholes for children to feed their addictions across the country. . And on the federal level, on the other hand, parliament deliberates.

Arkansas’ exemption is not only inconsistent with other state laws, but also with several bipartisan federal bills that serve the same purpose. For example, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) makes parental controls and the strongest safeguards the default options for accounts opened by minors. The platform should also incorporate the ability to turn off the most addictive features (such as recommendation algorithms and autoplay). Not surprisingly, this applies to all social media companies without exception.

of Laws to protect children on social media This, too, is a bill aimed at giving parents more tools to combat the worst effects big technology has on their children. The law applies uniform age verification standards across the country for all major social media platforms, sets the minimum age to 13 for using social media apps, and sets a minimum age of 13 for those between 13 and 17. will require parental consent. (Related: Fleiss and Misra: Can Elon Musk Protect Free Speech on the Internet?)

But it will take time for Congress to figure all this out.

Until then, lawmakers in Arkansas need to revisit the bill and close the huge loophole it created. After all, the goal, as the governor himself put it, is to “protect our children.” So there’s no reason to give Google and Amazon a pass.

Michael Toscano is Executive Director of the Institute for Family Studies.

Joel Thayer is Director of the Digital Progress Institute.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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