As San Mateo County superintendent of schools and a lifetime educator, I have a special window into schools and the lives of students. Far too often, I see the destructive impacts of social media on students and schools. Students are more often distracted, overly tired and anxious, and forgo opportunities for in-person connections. Schools, meanwhile, struggling to compete with social media for their students’ attention, manage increased incidents of online bullying and threats to the school community.
These harms are not caused by happenstance. For years now, social media companies have purposely designed their platforms to addict users to maximize profits. The longer a user is on their platform, the more these companies can monetize the online activity. Social media companies use psychologically manipulative algorithms, which are particularly harmful to youth, to seduce users to spend more time on their platforms.
According to a report last year from the U.S. Surgeon General, up to 95% of teenagers use some form of social media, and one third say they’re on social media “almost constantly.” The report also states that teens who spend more than three hours a day on social media platforms face “double the risk of experiencing poor mental health outcomes including symptoms of depression and anxiety.”
Many parents have shared with me their exasperation at the constant battles with their children over screen time. Parents are not shirking their responsibilities in this; they are simply up against an insidiously addictive product.
Bipartisan legislation, Senate Bill 976, introduced by Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley provides an important tool for protecting our youth from social media addiction.
If enacted, SB 976 would be the first law of its kind in the nation and would bar social media companies from sending an addictive feed to a minor without the consent of the youth’s parent or guardian. It would also prohibit a social media platform from sending notifications to minors during overnight hours and during the school day without the consent of a parent or guardian. Educators would especially welcome that change.
SB 976 would essentially require social media companies to turn off their highly addictive algorithms and features for young users, unless a parent or guardian consents, and instead, use a default setting for youth that would be a sequential feed, much like the old social media feeds. The Facebook of 10 years ago when I was raising my own teenagers enabled users to see posts from their friends and the people they follow — not harmful content they didn’t ask for. The default sequential feed setting required under SB 976 would achieve the same.
Opponents of SB 976 are attempting to defeat the legislation by arguing that protecting kids online will inevitably lead to the end of free speech online. Social media companies and others contend that, under SB 976, adult users who wish to remain anonymous would have to reveal their identities in order to receive a typical social media feed, thus infringing on their free speech rights.
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These arguments are seriously flawed. First, SB 976 does not require users to reveal their identities. Moreover, federal law already bans social media companies from allowing users under the age of 13 to be on their platforms without parental consent. Most importantly, the highly sophisticated algorithms employed by social media companies already have the ability to determine the age of their users.
SB 976 is a common sense approach to addressing a grave problem. Parents, educators, and our youth need practical guardrails to help protect kids from harm.
California is not alone in trying to create sensible safeguards. The state of New York is working on similar legislation, and there is a federal bipartisan effort as well.
We want our students to interact with their peers, spend time outdoors, and focus on learning when in school, rather than being glued to highly addictive or harmful feeds on their phones for hours on end. We can and should take steps to protect our youth. Senator Skinner’s SB 976 is a powerful and practical way to do that.
Nancy Magee is superintendent of schools for San Mateo County.