Christmas is all about the kids. Sugarplums dancing in their heads. Tiny tots, their eyes all aglow. Sitting on Santa’s lap. Making lists of presents. And while I know that not everyone celebrates this holiday, there’s still a universal appeal — no matter your faith — of doing things that will excite our children.
With that said, it’s my journalistic duty to drag you down. My 9-year-old grandson gave me his Christmas wish list, and at the top it said, “iPhone, iPad, Applewatch.” Just one would do. He feels deprived because 42% of kids have a phone by age 10 and 87% of teens own an iPhone. Virtually all have access to a computer.
Consequently, nearly all teens use the internet every day, with 46% online “almost constantly.” America’s top doctor, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, declares: “Young people are bombarded with messages through the media and popular culture that erode their sense of self-worth — telling them they are not good-looking enough, popular enough, smart enough, or rich enough.”
And yet the social media giants — Facebook, Instagram, TikTok — lure teens into dark places and knowingly addict them to living online. It makes the media gobs of money.
“I don’t think we can solely rely on the hope that the platforms can fix this problem on their own,” insists Murthy. “They’ve had 20 years.”
Murthy has forcefully laid out the decline of teen mental health. Nearly 20% of teens had a major depressive episode in the past year. One in three had a behavioral issue. As many as 30% of college students suffer with depression.
No surprise, then, that suicide is the second-leading cause of death for teens and young adults, reaching nearly 7,000 deaths, with 10% of high school students attempting suicide in the past year.
And while social media and the obsession with being connected online are not the sole cause — think post-COVID trauma and the lack of mental health counseling — it is surely near the top of the list.
Is the First Amendment to blame? Partly.
The First Amendment must take some of the blame for failing us miserably. It was meant to stop the government from fiddling with people’s right to speak and to publish, and encourage us to debate and fire off angry salvos against our leaders.
But that protection has opened the door to a nightmare: cyberbullying, sexual harassment, sexting, doxing, sextortion. Do the 45 words of the First Amendment make it impossible to prevent the abuses and behavior of the Big Tech titans?
And the holidays only make it worse, with $55 billion in electronic devices sold during the season of good cheer.
Don’t get me wrong: There are wonderful possibilities on the Internet. We can search and learn; talk and argue; play and amuse each other; and raise money for good causes. But we just can’t ignore that the glass is also half-empty — and truly dangerous.
Whistleblower testimony before Congress has been consistently clear: Social media platforms use algorithms to lure and addict young people and get them into trouble. Read their tragic stories at the nonprofit Parents for Safe Online Spaces: parentssos.org. The stories bring tears, not cheer.
Fixing some of the problems would be easy — and would not interfere with free speech protections. One solution: Allow users to choose how the algorithms run their computers. Empower the users, not owners. And block Big Tech from being able to use the trolling habits of kids against them.
Congress last passed legislation to protect kids in 1998, but it’s close now with the Kids Online Safety Act, which passed the Senate 91-3 in July. The bill is before the lame-duck House of Representatives with both parties’ support.
But the social media owners have spent gobs of money fighting regulation. After all, they earned $11 billion in advertising revenue off children and teens in 2022 with the current algorithm-driven model. And they have a deep well of lawyers already fighting Biden’s anti-monopoly lawsuits.
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What will Trump’s surgeon general do?
Beating them will not be easy. It begins with indignant parents — and a surgeon general who keeps fighting this battle. Remember, it was the surgeon general in the 1960s who pushed the envelope to make the cigarette companies admit that their product was poisoning the lungs of thousands of people. Multiple reports from the government turned that tide.
But I am not encouraged that the next surgeon general — to be appointed by the president-elect — will be so aggressive against Big Tech. Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg quietly went to Mar-a-Lago in late November to kiss the ring. Trump has long complained that Facebook has been unfair to him.
Did they discuss the government’s antitrust lawsuit against Meta in return for favors, like treating the Donald nicely? What they should be discussing is finding ways to fix the algorithms in return for negotiating the monopoly issues. But don’t hold your breath when the profiteering moguls sit down together.
Murthy insists it is time for a warning label on social media platforms. Make it simple: Facebook and Instagram are bad for your health! On its own, it wouldn’t keep the kids totally away, but it would undergird the principle behind regulations.
Technology companies will argue that new laws and rules are not necessary. The science on the harmful effects of social media, they insist, is not settled. Sure. The cigarette companies once argued that smoking was good for your health.
The companies will also invoke free speech, arguing that the government cannot force them to carry a product warning, which is “compelled speech.” They will claim that regulating algorithms is censorship.
These are smokescreen arguments, delaying tactics and just plain wrong. Censorship of content is clearly unconstitutional, but since First Amendment protections do not apply in the same way to an underage population, controlling content for young people wouldn’t be unconstitutional. Australia recently took the bold step of banning under-16-year-olds from social media. A more moderate alternative is making the platforms limit time kids could spend on there.
Regulating algorithms is not content control, just a way to make the platforms conform to safety guidelines. If we dream a little, it could be voluntary. Under great pressure from various lawsuits, the cigarette companies decided to stop aiming advertising at young people, and their lawsuits were settled.
Let me bring it back to the kids. Online is where young people live, for better or worse. The best thing we could do for Christmas is to fill their stockings with a slew of reforms to protect them. If not, Congress needs to get a load of coal in its collective stocking.
Rob Miraldi’s First Amendment writing has won numerous awards. He taught journalism at the State University of New York for many years. Email: rob.miraldi@gmail.com
