Last week the New York Legislature passed a measure to protect teens on social media.
The Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act prohibits social media platforms from letting children younger than 18 access addictive social media feeds without parental consent. In practice, the law is intended to help ensure children don’t receive social media content suggested to them via algorithms.
Researchers have found social media algorithms on platforms like TikTok actually serve teens what some call a steady “diet of darkness” online.
The Arkansas Attorney General’s office is suing TikTok and Meta — the company that owns Facebook and Instagram.
The A.G.’s lawsuits cite evidence that social media algorithms promote objectionable content to children and harm their mental health.
Social media platforms aren’t just websites. These are multimillion dollar businesses owned and operated by adults.
The adults who operate these social media platforms should not be able to register children as users and promote content to them without — at the very least — parental consent.
As we have said before, there’s mounting evidence that social media puts users’ personal information at risk is actually designed to push objectionable content to users. With that in mind, it’s good to see policymakers taking action to protect children online.
Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.
