Hiding in Media: Stronger legislation should be enacted that protects underage users on social media platforms

While chatting with friends, or scrolling through an infinite sea of Young Sheldon clips, the same platform fails to prevent spreading content involving child abuse. 

Despite growing concerns over the negative impact of social media on youth mental health and well-being, platforms like X, Instagram and Snapchat lack any structured regulation. With the large role social media plays in our society today, there is an urgent need for the United States government to enact more robust legislation to protect underage users from harmful effects of social media such as anxiety, depression, and self-harm. 

Attempting to raise awareness for such legislation, the U.S. Senate called a hearing with CEOs of the five biggest tech companies — Meta, Snap, Discord, X and TikTok — to appear at a hearing where Senator Ted Cruz accosted them for blatantly allowing content involving child-porn on their platforms.

Per usual, the billionaires just stood there, listening soullessly trying to feint empathy and all the while thinking about the next best way to sell $6.99 Temu knock-offs on their platform.

The one time I saw a drop of genuine sorrow for the CEOs was when relatives in the audience held up pictures of their children who had taken their lives because of social media. If seeing real people who have had their families ruined because of underage social media use wasn’t enough to invoke change, then change might never be possible.

Thousands of people have had their lives ruined because of a nude picture they didn’t mean to send. These kids weren’t aware of the inherent dangers of the internet, but nonetheless, social media platforms continue to allow underage nude pictures to be circulated or posted. 

Existing legislation such as the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act or the Children’s Internet Protection Act “protects” kids by including a “You must be 18 to use this website”— which is far too easy for kids to bypass with a simple click. 

These laws were signed over two decades ago, and current 13-year-olds could probably build a website faster than the senators who enacted this bill. Legislation like COPPA and CIPA  are meaningless — it’s just there for multi-billion dollar companies to avoid getting blamed when a teenage user kills themself after an online interaction. 

Most of these companies completely disregard any existing legislation, each time a new law comes out, they find a way to circumvent it by adding a small clause written in micro-text within the rest of their terms and conditions that everyone reads word for word when downloading new apps. Like how X has the rights to all content posted on the platform and can make money without user consent permission.

To address these shortcomings, it’s imperative that policymakers prioritize the creation of stricter social media regulations specifically tailored to protect underage users.  

According to the current legislation, billion-dollar corporations get away with allowing 40-year-old predators to interact with minors just because the website required them to click a button “ensuring” that they were 18.

One proposed bill that would establish some form of protection is the Kids Online Safety Act. Currently on the floor of Congress, it would allow minors more data privacy, make companies have stricter content filters and also mitigate some of the addictive aspects of social media — implementing time limits and disabling doom scrolling features currently found on Instagram reels or YouTube Shorts.

Though it would better protect children, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wouldn’t want the government breathing down his neck, selling user data to the highest bidder. Our Government may not like the lack of empathy and his unwillingness to change, but they do like the 19 million dollars that Meta spent on lobbying efforts, according to the Senate Office of Public Records.
But it isn’t entirely Zuckerberg’s fault. Part of the problem is that there are bad people on the internet, and no matter how much legislation is enacted, that won’t change. We can change how minors use social media, and ensure that they’re educated enough to do so.