Will This Legislation Get ‘Kids Off Social Media’?

Published: February 10, 2025

Will This Legislation Get ‘Kids Off Social Media’?

By Movieguide® Contributor

US Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) wants to get “Kids Off Social Media” to combat the rising mental health crisis among young Americans.

“…most teen girls (57%) now say that they experience persistent sadness or hopelessness (up from 36% in 2011), and 30% of teen girls now say that they have seriously considered suicide (up from 19% in 2011),” psychologist and author of The Anxious Generation Jonathan Haidt wrote, referencing the CDC’s Bi-Annual Youth Risk Behavior Study. “Boys are doing badly too, but their rates of depression and anxiety are not as high, and their increases since 2011 are smaller.”

Schatz’s Kids Off Social Media Act hopes to combat these affects by accomplishing these goals:

Prohibit social media platforms from allowing children under the age of 13 to create or maintain social media accounts, consistent with the current practices of major social media companies;
Prohibit social media companies from recommending content using algorithms to users under the age of 17;
Provide the FTC and state attorneys general authority to enforce the above provisions; and
Track existing CIPA framework, with changes, to require schools to work in good faith to limit social media on their networks.

The bill has received much support from parents as well.

According to Pew Research, 70% of parents are worried that “their teens are being exposed to explicit content or wasting too much time on social media, with two-thirds of parents saying that parenting is harder today compared to 20 years ago — and many of them cited social media as a contributing factor.”

Additionally, 87% of mothers agreed “that social media companies should not be allowed to use personalized recommendation systems to deliver content to children.”

The bill has received bipartisan support from Republican senators Ted Cruz and Katie Britt.

“There’s no doubt our country is in the throes of a mental health crisis, and the rise of social media usage among children and teenagers is inextricably tied to this issue,” said Senator Britt. “As a mom, this is something my own kids and their friends have to contend with every day. And as a Senator, I know our nation has to contend with it to safeguard the next generation. Putting in place commonsense guardrails that protect our kids from the dangers of social media is critical for their future and America’s future. I’m committed to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to put parents in the driver’s seat and enact commonsense, age-appropriate solutions to tackle this generational challenge.”

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