On February 14, 2023, APA Chief Science Officer Mitch Prinstein, PhD, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in a hearing titled Protecting Our Children Onlineopens in new window. In his testimony (PDF, 355KB)opens in new window, Prinstein shared research on the positive and negative impacts of social media and other online platforms on children, ensuring that the current state of the science was well represented.
Emerging evidence shared with the committee suggests that digital media use may be associated with a variety of positive outcomes for youth, including greater access to social support (particularly for youth from minoritized backgrounds); opportunities to form and benefit from online-only relationships; decreased feelings of isolation, particularly during covid-19; and greater opportunities for civic engagement.
However, Prinstein also noted several worrying ways that we’re starting to see social media impact the lives and mental health of our children. He explained that children may not have the ability to restrain themselves from using social media too much or from withstanding the negative impacts of peer influence. He also noted the biological vulnerabilities of youth when getting online, including that young brains can be “all gas pedal with no brakes.”
Members of the committee were interested to hear that adolescents’ use of social media is associated with lower engagement in alternate adaptive activities (e.g., reading) or those that promote health (e.g., exercise or sleep). Studies reveal that social media use is associated with disrupted sleep patterns among youth. Disrupted sleep can lead to abnormal brain development among adolescents, indicating a potential lifelong impact of youth social media use.
To start to solve the problems identified by early research into this area, APA Services recommended a wide set of legislative fixes, including:
- Allocating at least $100 million to fund research: While much is known about the impact of social media on children, there is a severe need for additional research on these impacts. Federal funding to support research is essential to ensure it is objective, open, and actionable.
- Providing education: Educating young users and their caregivers about how best to use the platforms to mitigate negative impacts is an essential intervention that can start today.
- Providing tools: Requiring social media companies to provide youth with options to make changes to their social media settings can promote mental health by protecting their information, disabling features that are particularly addictive, and opting out of algorithms. Social media companies can also be required to set defaults to address harms.
- Displaying warnings: Social medial companies should acknowledge known impacts of their platforms by providing warnings and resources to parents of young users, developing plans to mitigate known harms, and determining whether these warnings and plans were effective, with iterative updates based on the findings.
- Protecting marginalized and minoritized communities: Social media is increasingly a host to discrimination and unfair treatment for individuals of color, LGBTQ+ communities, and individuals with disabilities. More should be done by platforms to discourage, report, and reform this activity.
- Requiring a response: Social media companies must develop and publish internal response plans for troubling behavior or posts on their platform and evaluate the effectiveness of the responses. This reporting mechanism is essential to discouraging escalation and alerting relevant authorities about potential harm resulting from online activity. Companies should create dedicated channels to report harm on the platforms.
- Creating accountability for social media harm to youth: Social media platforms must be held accountable to prevent and mitigate harmful content, such as promotion of self-harm, suicide, eating disorders, substance use, and sexual exploitation. Independent audits can assess risks and determine whether the platform is taking meaningful steps to prevent harm. These must be paired with enforcement actions when platforms fail to effectively mitigate harm to children.
- Increasing transparency: Requiring access to data and processes internal to social media companies through new transparency and reporting requirements. This may require social media companies to set up new or more extensive data collecting regimes. User privacy must also be protected with increased data transparency.
- Passing the Kids Online Safety Act and previously proposed legislative fixes, such as updates to the Children Online Privacy and Protection Act. These proposed bills take important steps towards enacting measures that curtail harmful practices while authorizing vital research to understand additional impacts online platforms are having on children.
Read APA’s full testimony (PDF, 355KB)opens in new window online.
A full recording of the hearingopens in new window is available online.
For more information, contact Corbin Evans.