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Can States Legislate Social Media Use for Teens?

The Wall Street Journal's Facebook Files revealed what Facebook knew about the damaging impacts of Instagram on teens' mental health.

In his State of the City address, Mayor Adams declared social media to be a public health hazard, at the same time that Florida is working on a ban for all teens under 16. Katherine Keyes, professor of epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, talks about what her research has shown on the good and bad effects of social media. Plus, Andrew Gounardes, New York State Senator (D, District 26 - Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, the Columbia Street Waterfront District, Dumbo, Dyker Heights, Fort Hamilton, Gowanus, Park Slope, Red Hook, South Slope, and Sunset Park), explains two new proposed state laws that aim to protect anyone under 18 online, including one which would prohibit social media companies from collecting and selling information and another which would curb features like curated algorithmic feeds.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Coming up at the top of the hour, Mayor Eric Adams will join us. That just got scheduled over the weekend. We had already planned to talk in this next segment about one of the highlights from the Mayor's State of the City address last week. He became the first mayor in the country to officially declare social media a public health hazard. We'll see if that leads to any restrictive policies for minors and social media. I'll ask the mayor about that when he comes on.

Florida is considering locking out kids under 16 from many platforms as an example of a bill that's being considered somewhere. We'll also talk in this segment to a New York State senator who has a bill for some new kind of regulation here, and we'll ask the mayor about it when he comes on. Since he declared it a public health hazard, we called a public health professor to put the issue in public health context. We will meet the professor in a minute, but first here's the mayor during his State of the City address last week.

Mayor Eric Adams: Companies like TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, look, are fueling a mental health crisis by designing their platforms with addictive and dangerous features. We cannot stand by and let big tech monetize our children's privacy and jeopardize their mental health.

[applause]

That's why today, Dr. Vasan, Dr. Ashwin Vasan, is issuing a health commissioner advisory officially designating social media as a public health crisis hazard in New York City.

[applause]

Great job. We are the first major city in America to take this step and call out the danger of social media like this.

Brian Lehrer: Mayor Adams last week. With us now, Katherine Keyes, professor of epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Dr. Keyes, thank you so much for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Prof. Katherine Keyes: Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: You heard the Mayor's language there. Companies like TikTok, YouTube, Facebook fueling a mental health crisis by designing the platforms with addictive and dangerous features. Would you at the Mailman School say public health crisis?

Prof. Katherine Keyes: Certainly we do know that there is a mental health crisis among adolescents and young adults across the United States. Really, over the last 10 years, we've seen over a 50% increases in serious depression and anxiety among teens and among young adults in this country, so that is certainly true. The role of social media continues to be researched.

Certainly, we know that when we look at factors such as the amount of time that teens are spending on social media, that's less correlated with mental health problems than what they're doing when they're on the platform, so that's certainly where I agree with the mayor that more regulation and more attention needs to be drawn.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, I want to invite parents of current children or young teenagers, let's say, to call in and say, at the policy level, would you actually like to see New York State or New York City or any other entity actually ban or otherwise restrict your kids from any particular social media platforms? This is what they're considering in Florida explicitly. We'll hear from New York State Senator Andrew Gounardes in a minute, what he's proposing in Albany right now.

Parents, what do you want in the law to protect your kids from the potential harms from social media, or is it all on you? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Be really interested to take any parents' calls on this now that it's moving into the legislative realm. 212-433-9692. You can also text to that number. I do see, Professor, that back in 2020, you and your colleagues at Columbia published research in the Journal of Adolescent Health that show the daily social media use is not "a strong or consistent risk factor for depressive symptoms among adolescents." Seems, maybe, contrary to what at least we're hearing from the lawmakers now. What did you find exactly?

Prof. Katherine Keyes: That study is consistent with a number of different reviews and meta-analyses which are where we combine research from a lot of different studies. There are 250 different studies right now that basically show what we found. Which is that when you look at things like going on social media every day or even the amount of time that teens are spending on these platforms, that's not really the relevant metric when it comes to mental health.

Just saying spending time on social media is not a strong or a consistent risk factor for mental health problems. In all of the studies that I have done, and many others have done as well, where we see problems is in the particular content that some teens are viewing. Teens, for example, who have mental health problems who engage in content that's related to self-harm. Teens who are posting images of their body and engaging with a lot of content around body image.

We're seeing teams report more disordered eating, for example, so these types and patterns of social media use that are particularly problematic are where we need to focus attention as both parents and clinicians and policymakers. When we just look at the amount of times that our teens are spending online, it's just not really correla [sound cut] mental health problems.

Brian Lehrer: Can they do that? Can they thread the needle in the way that you're describing at the policy level, in your opinion, if you go to the policy level?

Prof. Katherine Keyes: Yes, I believe that there are different policy levels both from the company's standpoint and from a legislative standpoint around the types and interactions of content that kids are consuming. For example, there's a lot of, right now, online forums where-- That are social media-related where teens can log in and discuss really problematic content related to self-harm, and there are a number of different legislative efforts that have been made in trying to regulate these types of sites that give teens dangerous information about topics related to self-harm. That's one example of ways that, at a legislative level, we could intervene here.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. All right, well also joining us now briefly to explain to bills that he has co-sponsored in the New York State Legislature is New York State Senator Andrew Gounardes. He represents District 26. That's Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, the Columbia Street Waterfront District, Dumbo, Dyker Heights, Fort Hamilton, Gowanus, Park Slope, Red Hook, South Slope, Sunset Park, big district in Brooklyn. Senator Gounardes welcome back to WNYC. Thank you for giving us a few minutes.

Sen. Andrew Gounardes: Thanks, Brian. Nice to be here.

Brian Lehrer: What would your bills do?

Sen. Andrew Gounardes: We have two bills that we're working on right now. One is called The SAFE for Kids Act, is the Stop Addictive Feed Exploitation for Kids Act, which basically says that, as a default option, social media app cannot use addictive algorithms to generate content to show to users under the age of 18. Instead, those users would receive a chronological feed of the people they choose to follow. Their friends, their family, that Taylor Swift fan page, whatever.

They would not be subjected to this endless curation of content that is not what they signed up to see that leads them to spend either 20 minutes or three hours scrolling indefinitely through their feeds. We feel that that is one of the most aggressive harms that social media is causing on young people. The second bill is called The Child Data Privacy Protection Act. It would prohibit internet companies from collecting personal data from users under the age of 18 and then using that data for commercial purposes.

This is already federal law for kids under the age of 13 through the last time Congress took action to protect kids online, COPPA, Child Online Privacy Protection Act. That was in 1998 when we were still getting AOL discs in the mail and still getting on the internet with dialogue, so we are trying to update COPPA and New York state law and bringing that age standard up to the age of 18.

We think that both things-- Both of these things together will help break the hold that social media companies have on young kids. There was a Harvard study that came out just a week or two ago. These companies made $11 billion in ad sales off of addicting our kids to the content that they're showing on these platforms, and that's really problematic.

Brian Lehrer: Let me take a phone call. Here is Jasper in Astoria. You're on WNYC. Hi, Jasper, thanks so much for calling in.

Jasper: All right, thanks for taking my call. I am so happy to hear about this. I told your screener I was born in 2000. I came of age around the time that Instagram-- Like, when I was in middle school is when Instagram came around, so the content itself is not really-- It's a concern, obviously, but I think it's kind of Pandora's box. When you talk about any-- The things that my generation has seen on the internet is not nice but the algorithm really is the issue to me. I'm so excited to hear that that's-- That there's a proposal to regulate that because it's incredible the way that you can open it for one moment and time has gone by.

TikTok has this feature where after a certain amount of scrolling, a TikTok-- A post comes up that says, "Hey, you've been scrolling for too long." It's like at what point, when a company has to tell you, "Hey, this product is bad for you, stop using it," it's just completely absurd. It's part of the breakdown in reality that's going on with DeepFakes, with all these other sort of things, when people are just so absorbed. Anyways, I think this is great, and I really support it.

Brian Lehrer: Jasper, thank you very much. He talked about the scrolling and the scrolling and the scrolling, and so did the senator. Professor Keyes, let me play a clip of one of the lawmakers in Florida and the language that they are using around this idea. I know you said before it's not so much the amount of time that kids are spending on social media, it's the danger of some of the particular content, like self-harm-related content, but here is Florida State representative McFarland, don't have a first name, a Republican from Sarasota and co-sponsor of this legislation. I'm sorry, Fiona McFarland, I do have that name now, speaking on the house floor last Wednesday in Tallahassee.

Fiona McFarland: It's like a digital fentanyl and even the most plugged-in parent or attuned teen has a hard time shutting the door.

Brian Lehrer: She said these dopamine hits are so addictive it's like a digital fentanyl. Those are medical kind of references, so how do they strike you as a professor of public health?

Katherine Keyes: There have been a number of scales that have been developed that have tried to assess this concept of social media addiction. The items that they've used and across different studies to measure social media addiction are similar to what we measure in other types of addictive substances as well. Wanting to stop and not being able to, spending excessive effort to ensure continuous access, craving to use the product, lying or deceptive behavior around the product.

When they've used these scales in studies, what we find is that teens and adolescents who report higher levels of those types of behaviors do have more mental health problems, but there's wide variation in the population in who reports those kinds of addictive symptoms across different population subgroups, so I don't think we have the evidence or the science right now to say that social media is universally a digital fentanyl, but certainly, we do know that some kids and adolescents, and by the way, adults too, report some really problematic behaviors related to their social media use that infringe with their daily lives.

Brian Lehrer: Senator Gounardes, this seems to be a conservative Republican push in Florida. It seems to be led by some conservatives there. It's passed the house now, it's going to the Florida State Senate to, literally, ban people- I'm not sure if it's 16 and under or it's under 16 but around there. -from many of the primary social media sites and kick those currently with accounts there off the platform. Have you as a New York Democrat considered going that far?

Andrew Gounardes: No, we have not. I'll say, by the way, our legislation in both the Assembly and the Senate has bipartisan support and about 30 co-sponsors [unintelligible 00:14:09] the legislature on both Democrat and Republican. We don't think about going that far because we think that that runs up against significant First Amendment concerns. As much as sometimes we might want to take social media away from kids or ban certain types of content, we do have to operate within the structures of our constitutional protections and that includes the First Amendment, and so we never seriously thought that, from a legal standpoint, our public policy could go so far as to say we're going to just remove this entirely from this population of people. I'm sure the legislators in Florida have-- Are thinking about it differently. We just didn't think that that made sense from a legal or constitutional perspective.

Brian Lehrer: On the idea, even though this isn't exactly your bill in New York, on the idea of banning people categorically by age, listener rights, last time I checked, age on social media was simply volunteered by the individual. How could we possibly prevent a teen from just lying about their birthday? I do see that the Florida legislation would require them to use a third party for age verification services, and there you go. I'm curious. Well, maybe, Professor, this is for you. As a matter of policy, I don't know if you have experience in this realm with anything else, but do age-related bans work or there are just too many ways to get around it?

Katherine Keyes: Certainly we know with the-- With voluntary birth dates that there-- That many teens and young people do lie about their age to log into platforms that age is younger than recommended, so a third-party verification system certainly would cut down on that level of young people engaging in ways that they're not intended to by the platforms themselves.

Brian Lehrer: Do you have any comment on the New York legislation? This might be first blush. I don't know if you heard it before Senator Gounardes just summarized his bills a couple of minutes ago.

Katherine Keyes: Yes. My overall take is that there are so-- Banning social media entirely for people in this age group certainly will have some population mental health benefits, but I think it's also important to recognize that there are certain groups who receive a lot of benefit from positive social connections through social networking sites. When we look at queer, gay, and non-binary youth, they have four to five times the risk of suicidal behavior and fatal suicide in this country.

Many of them, there's a-- Sufficient evidence based around the importance of online social connections, especially for kids who are in places where they don't feel comfortable being out. Kids with mental health problems. While there are-- Is really problematic content online for kids with mental health problems, there's also ways that kids reach out and find support. Banning social media really is a blunt tool and will have some benefits and, potentially, some harms as well.

Brian Lehrer: Do you feel, Senator, that your bills would continue to enable teens and other young people who are finding meaningful community there that they may not be able to find anywhere else, such as the LGBTQ examples that the professor was just giving, that they will still be able to do that under your bills?

Andrew Gounardes: Absolutely. Anyone, teen, adult, anyone who wants to search for specific subject matter, specific hashtags, specific pages, is-- Will totally be able to do so under our bill. All we're saying is that the algorithm cannot self-generate the next piece of content that is shown on a minor's feed automatically. There is some benefit and there are populations that certainly do benefit from positive social connections, but at the same time, some of these very vulnerable communities, some of the challenges that they face stem from the abuses of social media.

Just think how easy it has been- It was in the news for the last year plus. -for someone to get access to like Andrew Tate videos, right? Here's someone who's spreading really toxic noxious content that is misogynistic, homophobic, and so on and so on, and it's so easily accessible just by searching one type of video. 5, 10, 15 minutes later, that content will be shown on your feed automatically.

We do have to put some protections in place even for those most vulnerable users so that we can enhance their experience and allow them to be able to find the resources and the community and the connections that they want without being subjected to content that they're not asking to see or content that is being shown to them just based on what their profile says, what videos they've clicked on in the past, what videos they've paused on in the past, where they are geographically, and so on and so on.

That's what the algorithm is doing right now. It's taking all of these intangible data points and assuming this is what the user wants to see even if it's not, and that, we think, is what's causing a significant part of the harm here.

Brian Lehrer: Let me get one more call in here from a parent before we run out of time. Nikki in Morristown, you're on WNYC. Hi, Nikki.

Nikki: Hi. Thank you so much. I would have to say I generally align on the left. I'm pretty open, but I do feel like, as parents, you don't get a lot of support. For example, I had my son on something called Google Family Link which is something where you can actually monitor their apps and you can give them only five minutes on TikTok. It's really useful. You can also monitor how long they can use the phone. When my son turned 13, he got an email saying, "The law is that now you can manage that," so your mother's no longer in charge. You can manage that. That's outrageous, the age of 13. For kids, it's hard. It's hard. All these games, it's like a bottomless pit. You can play video games for 10 hours. If there is no kind of limit on this online access--

Brian Lehrer: Do you think the law could do anything that you can't do as a parent?

Nikki: Well, I was able to control his data through Family Link, but then there was a law somewhere that says at 13 he can manage that. Which means at the-- From the age of 13, you don't have-- Through Google Family Link I could remove access to any type of known pornography, or I--

Brian Lehrer: Yes, but now not.

Nikki: Yes, these are laws that are put in place by-- I don't know if it's Congress, but I mean--

Brian Lehrer: Yes, well, that's a good question. Nikki, I'm going to leave it there because we're running out of time, and you put such an important question on the table. I want Senator Gounardes to have a chance to respond. I'm not familiar with that particular 13-year-old independence law that she's referring to or if that's real. Do you know that reference?

Andrew Gounardes: Well, the only law that exists right now that's a federal law to regulate kids and the internet is that legislation I said earlier, COPPA, Child Online Privacy Protection Act, which basically only applies to kids under the age of 13, and it has very strong privacy protections for how kids under the age of 13 can access the internet, what type of data of theirs can be collected, how that data can be used.

I feel very reasonably confident to say that that's the law she's referencing, but again, that law was passed in 1998 when we were still getting America Online discs mailed to our phones. The Internet has changed 1,000 times over since then. Our laws need to keep up with the times as well.

Brian Lehrer: State Senator Andrew Gounardes of Brooklyn, Katherine Keyes, professor of epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, thank you both very much for joining us.

Andrew Gounardes: Thank you.

Katherine Keyes: Thank you.

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