Reporters Ask the Mayor

[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. There's some interesting Mayor Adams news today. He's acting now on something that he said in his State of the City address a few weeks ago. Remember he came down hard on social media companies calling their presence a public health crisis. Here's that clip.

Mayor Adams: Just as the Surgeon General did with tobacco and guns, we're treating social media like other public health hazards, and it must stop. We must ensure that tech companies take responsibility for their product. You'll be hearing more about this in the future. We are going to correct this crisis that's facing our children.

Brian Lehrer: Now we are hearing more as he promised. Less than a month after this speech, here's what we're hearing. Yesterday, news broke that the City of New York has filed a lawsuit against the owners of TikTok, also Meta which owns Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, Snapchat, and YouTube for their role in worsening teen mental health. Here's a clip of the mayor from that announcement yesterday.

Mayor Adams: Young people in New York City are experiencing anxiety, hopelessness, and even attempted suicide at rates we have never seen before, and there is growing evidence that the power of social media is a major cause.

Brian Lehrer: Speaking of teens, I'm sure many would have liked to take a mental health day on Tuesday when school buildings were shuttered thanks to the city's first significant snowstorm in years. Instead, public school kids across the city encountered serious tech issues on their first remote learning snow day, and we will talk about that too. Also speaking of lawsuits, the mayor was also sued for failing to expand housing vouchers to low-income New Yorkers recently. Here for another breakdown of the mayor's weekly news conference and to cover all the latest stories coming out of City Hall is WNYC and Gothamist lead Mayor Adams reporter, Elizabeth Kim. She usually joins us on Wednesdays after the mayor's Tuesday news conference. For scheduling reasons, we're doing it on Thursday this week. Liz, thanks for coming back on.

Elizabeth Kim: Hi, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: I'm glad we waited the extra day even though it wasn't because we were anticipating that the mayor would announce that the city is joining a lawsuit against the social media companies, but what do you make of it?

Elizabeth Kim: Well, at his State of the City, the mayor hinted that there was something big coming on this issue, and he did it yesterday. He says that he wants to hold these social media companies accountable for the harm that he believes they're inflicting on children. He wants them to put in more controls. He's hoping the lawsuit will also spur federal and state legislation, and he wants them to pay roughly $100 million in what he says the city has to spend on children's mental health. Now, I want to note that this announcement was not well-received uniformly, specifically the business community, and I'm speaking about Kathryn Wylde.

She heads the Partnership for New York City that's a lobbying group for many of the major companies in the city. She issued a statement that was very critical of what the mayor decided to do, and she notes that a lot of these companies are large New York City employers. What's interesting about that is, I can't remember the last time I heard Kathryn Wylde issue a critical remark of the mayor's policy. She's been a stalwart supporter of the mayor. You have to remember that Mayor Adams came out and said that he wanted, in contrast to Bill de Blasio, to be a very pro-business mayor. I think that's the context in which we should look at this very interesting decision to sue these social media companies.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, it's an interesting tension between wanting New York to be the center for tech jobs in America, or maybe second to Silicon Valley if we don't think we can actually compete with them for the most, but New York I think is the number two center for tech jobs in America behind Silicon Valley already. Adams being a pro-business mayor generally, and this now, sticking it to them. Why do you think he really did it? Was it just out of so much concern for teen mental health that he thinks this is worth the possible loss of some jobs in the city, or what's going on?

Elizabeth Kim: It's not just that, it's politically risky. We've talked about how the mayor is at a very vulnerable moment in his tenure. He has very low approval ratings, and he really needs to solidify support in places like the business community. I think that the mayor recognizes that this issue is striking a nerve. He's not the only person who's raising it. This is being discussed in hearings in Congress. There are state lawmakers who are proposing legislation to put limits on social media.

This, in many ways, is a hot issue. I don't want to say that the mayor is somehow capitalizing on it, to take him at his word, he is very concerned. Very early on, he has spoken about this. Maybe his first year in office, and he spoke about the subway surfing incidents, which he believes that children see the videos and it gets the idea in their head, and then they want to duplicate these feats and brag or promote them on their social media.

Brian Lehrer: Tell me again, tell everybody again what exactly the social media companies would be compelled to do if this suit succeeds, in addition to pay the city $100 million in damages.

Elizabeth Kim: Well, he wants them to put more controls and adding more parental controls. Now, the social media companies would say that's something that they are already doing. I don't know exactly how specific the mayor is and what exactly he wants the social media companies to do with respect to who gets to view these videos. Maybe are there certain videos that they take down. I know that when the subway surfing incident first happened and there were fatalities that the MTA reached out to these companies and asked them to proactively take down any videos that they saw of children in New York promoting videos of themselves subway surfing. That's one example.

Brian Lehrer: When the mayor was here on this show the other week, I asked him about his State of the City reference to social media companies causing a teen public health crisis, and asked if he would support the law that's under consideration. It's just a bill at this point, it's not the law in Florida where they might actually ban anyone under 16 from being on the major social media sites. I don't know how they would enforce that, but the mayor said, yes, he's open to considering that, nothing is off the table right now. I wonder if this is even the last that we'll see with respect to social media platforms and Eric Adams's policy.

Elizabeth Kim: I think it's a difficult line for the mayor to walk because, on the one hand, he's very pro-technology. He himself was a computer programmer, and technology is now part of the school curriculum. What do you do at city schools, for instance? Do you take away YouTube, for example, which is one of the companies that the mayor is suing? A lot of these platforms are also being used for education purposes I would think as well. I don't know how the city and the DOE manages that.

Brian Lehrer: Pro tech. Didn't he come in saying he wanted to be paid in crypto, something like that?

Elizabeth Kim: Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: We'll see how that worked out. Listeners, do you support the idea of this lawsuit against some of the major social media companies? Should they pay damages to New York City? Should they place new restrictions? Even maybe should New York City consider, like the state of Florida is considering, a ban on users under 16. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692, call or text. We'll continue with Liz Kim in just a minute and talk about other things that came up at the mayor's news conference this week as well as the apparent disaster of the tech sector, or let's say of the technology that they've purchased for the remote learning snow day on Tuesday. Stay with us.

[music - Marden Hill: Hijacked]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. As we continue with our lead Eric Adams reporter, Elizabeth Kim, we'll play some more clips of the mayor, but I want to read some texts that are coming in and take at least one phone call on the fact that the mayor has joined a lawsuit that sues the social media platforms, many of the major companies that have social media platforms for $100 million in damages for the city, and to get them to put forth new restrictions or algorithms that make it harder for teens to access content that may be damaging to their mental health.

Some listeners are writing, "I saw a subway surfing accident with my own eyes while I was a busker. The incident traumatizes me and will stay with me for the rest of my life." He likes the fact that the social media companies are at least trying to take down those videos of subway surfing. A listener writes, "Not a general fan of Mayor Adams, but bully for him, action not talk." Another listener writes, "Okay, Mr. L, requiring businesses to take responsibility for the consumer products is a problem?" Obviously in support of the mayor there. Sherry in Montclair, who says she's a teacher, has a teacher's perspective. Sherry, you're on WNYC. Thanks for calling in.

Sherry: Yes, I had to call in. I'm on my lunch break, but I just wanted to say, this is no laughing matter. I'm so happy about what this mayor is doing. I haven't followed him. I don't know much. I'm busy working all the time, but I will tell you this, parents and people that are not involved with children, that are not putting in the hours that we are putting in, we see how serious this is. They have to do something. Depression, anxiety, addiction to these phones and attempts of suicide, and thoughts about suicide, it is off the charts. We haven't seen anything like this. Something has to be done.

Brian Lehrer: Why do you think it's social media driving those feelings?

Sherry: It's not that I think, it's we see it. We see it from morning to afternoon. You can see the mood changes. It used to be where children come into school and everyone's talking, you have to tell them to be quiet. That's gone now, Brian. You walk into a classroom, and there's silence. In the hallways outside, they're addicted to these phones, into these sites, and I'm just telling you, we are in trouble, and it's no laughing matter.

Brian Lehrer: Sherry, thank you very much. Some pushback texts coming in. One writes, "I don't dispute that social media poses challenges to our youth, but we could use our resources to fund both counselors and schools. The current ratio of students to counselors makes the services truly insufficient. A focus on mental health response to the trauma that New York City students have gone through since the pandemic, instead of expecting them to just get over it already. Also funding critical thinking and web safety, so our students and citizens have the lifelong skills to question what they see online."

Another listener writes, "Nothing can harm a young person's well-being more than seeing people with dire need living in abject poverty on our city streets. As an adult, I struggle not to fall apart every day, seeing the misery we inflict by ignoring poverty and focusing on everything." Another listener writes, "Sounds a lot like Big Brother in real life. This idea of government regulating the social media company's content, very scary." Interesting array of reactions there. Let's go on, Liz, to some other things. Here's a clip of Mayor Adams from Monday's News Conference where he announced that schools would be going remote because of the snow on Tuesday.

David Banks: IBM was not ready for Primetime, and that's what happened here. Our entire team had been geared up, and we told them that almost a million students by between 7:30 and eight o'clock this morning would be coming online to go to school. At around that time, they said we were overwhelmed with the surges, though somehow they were surprised that there were so many folks who were coming on. So to say that I am disappointed, frustrated, and angry is an understatement.

Brian Lehrer: Obviously, that was not Mayor Adams. That was school's chancellor, David Banks, my error, at the mayor's news conference talking about how badly things went. Liz, he laid it at the feet of IBM.

Elizabeth Kim: Right. Tech seemed to be a real theme this week. As he said, what happened was the mayor had his first big snow day decision to make. It was the first time that there was a big snowstorm coming on a weekday, and he had to make a call. This is a momentous decision for mayors. Mayors have gotten into a lot of trouble over their performance on snow day. He decided to be careful. What he did was he said, "We're going to go remote. We're closing schools and we're going remote." Then what happened was that we heard reports, basically across the city, where students and their parents said that their kids couldn't log on.

They were getting error messages, or they just couldn't get on. Teachers had the same problem, and everybody was scrambling. The mayor did his weekly off-topic press conference in which he comes out, and the chancellor, Chancellor Banks, was there, and he offered this mea culpa. He basically also laid it at the feet of IBM. IBM, he says, is their contractor, which helps them with this specific remote login, that system that they run, and he said that IBM wasn't ready for Primetime.

He did talk about that they, on their end, had done simulations. By that, he means that there was a day during this school year in which students, and also teachers practiced logging on to their accounts to make sure that they were working, but the school system couldn't do that on the scale of a real remote day? Also, what was also noteworthy was the chancellor was asked whether IBM was involved in those simulations, and he said no.

Brian Lehrer: In fact, here's a clip of the mayor. Now we do have the mayor, and he seems to be blaming the parents. Listen.

Mayor Adams: Listen, snow days, my mother had to walk us to school with her arthritic knees. If you are a parent and you are not willing to navigate a computer for your child, that's a sad commentary. That's a sad commentary.

Brian Lehrer: Then here's the mayor after the Tuesday morning tech failures again saying maybe a failure is not a failure.

Mayor Adams: Every moment in the New York City Public School is a teaching moment, we should never move away from that. Remote learning is going to be with us for a while. We're going to continue to see the various iterations, and the goal is to get perfection.

Brian Lehrer: This is WNYC FM HD in AM New York, WNJT FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are New York and New Jersey Public Radio and live streaming at wnyc.org with our lead Eric Adams reporter, Liz Kim. Are parents reacting angrily to that first clip that we played there? He said if you're a parent and you're not willing to navigate a computer for your child, that's a sad commentary, but it seems like a lot of parents were trying, but it didn't work that well.

Elizabeth Kim: Right. That was very ironic that he got that question, and the question was, basically, Mayor Adams, after the pandemic, a lot of parents are tired of doing this. They're scrambling to get to work in the morning, and then now you're asking them to return to this pandemic era of logging on with their kids to remote learning. His response was that this is a responsibility that parents have to help their children log on because this kind of learning is going to be with us for the foreseeable future.

The fact that he didn't offer much sympathy for that, I think did rub some parents the wrong way. You saw some comments on social media in response to the mayor's remarks. Then sure enough, it turned out that what happened was exactly what a lot of people were worried about, was that there was a technical failure, and this was not just a parent needing to navigate the system. This was now turning into hours-long kind of confusion of, "What do I do? The system's not working, who do I contact in this moment?" Basically trying to figure out what to do when your child can't get on remote. The system, it didn't work the way that the mayor thought it would.

Brian Lehrer: Remote learning will continue to the point of the second clip on future snow days because as we've been hearing on WNYC newscasts, two things. The teacher's contract mandates that school doesn't start until after Labor Day, and the state mandates that there be at least 180 school days during the year in order for the city to get its full state aid. We have enough holidays in the school year now that there's no room to cancel school for snow days.

This is going to be a thing. It sounds like inevitably, and there's no real actual policy debate here, but I have one text message from a listener who writes, "I'm going to primary Adams on the sole platform of snow days, not remote days." [laughs] Who knows if that person is actually going to primary the mayor on this, but there are strong feelings out there, but I'm not sure there's a lot of wiggle room in the law and the contract.

Elizabeth Kim: You're right, Brian, those factors make it very difficult to have the traditional or old-fashioned, I should say, snow day. That was also a criticism that came out of this week's decision to go remote. A lot of people said, "Why don't we just give kids a break that they haven't seen this much snow, at least in years, so let them go sledding." There are requirements that they have to comply with. There are a lot more holidays than there used to be, and many people say that that is a great thing so that they can celebrate cultural diversity, but this is the cost and this is the penalty, is that, we're not going to see a lot of snow days in the foreseeable future.

Brian Lehrer: Let's hear what a teacher has to think on both of these issues. I want to acknowledge that most of the calls we're getting are not on the issue of snow days, but still on the issue of the effect of social media, on teens' mental health and whether it's a good idea for the mayor to be suing the social media companies for more restrictions or changes in the algorithms. Jennifer in Manhattan, you are on WNYC. Hello.

Jennifer: Hi. This is very exciting. Okay. Long-time listener, first-time caller. I am a teacher. We are taking away phones for a week from the start, and this is in high school from the start of the day to the end of the day as a trial in a couple of weeks. I was talking to my homeroom students this morning, and there was a lot of upset feelings about this. One student was saying, "Well, my parents won't let me then leave for lunch because they need me to have my phone all the time so they can track me."

I just want to say, as a parent of an 11-year-old who just has a gab phone now, this is the problem. Parents have to learn to trust their kids. They are not learning the life skills that they need. I grew up in New York in the '80s, I did not have a phone. You navigate, you learn to get help. If you need help by talking to somebody, going into a store, I'm really concerned about the lack of self-reliance, the lack of confidence in these students, in these young kids right now because of the reliance on the phones. Also, social media obviously is super damaging with the lack of nuance and all the black-and-white didactic words on that.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Is the reason for your school's policy of testing a week of no phones because the phones are disruptive in terms of teachers being able to educate the kids? Or does it have anything to do with this larger issue of their mental health generally?

Jennifer: I think it's the larger issue of a distraction and an addiction. We do take them away at the beginning of every class in a bin, they go into a bin, so I don't think it's the distraction from learning. I think it's the distraction from life, from face-to-face interaction with your peers, because between classes they're looking at them on the stairwells, they're tripping, they're not looking up, they're not noticing the world around them.

Brian Lehrer: If you can model breaking the addiction during the school days hours, hopefully they can. on their own outside of school, learn to be on the phone and off the phone, and on the phone and off the phone rather than always on the phone. Yes?

Jennifer: Well, let's hope. [chuckles] We'll see.

Brian Lehrer: That's the theory. Do you teach in the city schools? Do you have any reaction to the snow day remote learning?

Jennifer: My 11-year-old who is in the DOE, a big huge school in Queens, she loved it. She really enjoyed being on a screen all day. I think that's a problem. I don't know if there was much learning that happened. Right afterwards, we went out with sleds, and she's got some time with her friends in the snow, but I do worry that she loved it because she got to be on a screen all day.

Brian Lehrer: Jennifer, thank you very much for your call. Please call us again. One more on this, Matt in Westchester. You're on WNYC. Hi, Matt.

Matt: Hi. How's it going?

Brian Lehrer: Going okay. What you got?

Matt: Well so yes, that last caller was fantastic. I was really engrossed. I'm also a teacher of a different sorts. I'm an athletic coach, and so I work with a lot of kids of all different ages, elementary school through middle and high school. I also have two very young children of my own, so this is a topic that's on my mind a lot lately. One of my student's parents happens to be an attorney for Meta, is on the team of their attorney's team. I talk with him about these lawsuits that of the ilk that New York City, I guess is jumping into.

His contention, and, of course, he works for the company, he's a really a bright guy, he said that he doesn't actually see the evidence that when you look at studies, they generally are not able to point to actual causation of social media use directly to declines in mental health. Sometimes you find the opposite where people are struggling with a mental health issue will turn to something like social media and use it inappropriately or destructively in ways that it's not intended to be used, which certainly it can be.

The previous caller is talking about the addictive nature of phones in general which translates also over into social media apps, but it's a phone writ large, I guess. Anyway, so I think it's easy for us to point. The other thing that he was pointing out and that struck a chord with me is that he said that there were similar kind of outcries to video games in the '80s, and then even back further into rock and roll music as to those things, those outlets being the causes of youth mystery--

Brian Lehrer: You're doing a good job, Matt, of describing your conversation and what you're hearing from this person who is a lawyer for Meta. We're getting a good preview of what their arguments in court might be defending themselves against this lawsuit. What's your own perception as an athletic coach who works with many kids of different ages? Do you think social media is leading them to mental health problems?

Matt: You know, it's actually hard for me to say. I do see some problematic social media use especially with Snapchat. I see them like they have these streaks and they're always trying to communicate with their friends. I agree with your previous caller regarding the phone in general. I guess social media could be also texting and things like that. Use social media apps to communicate with one another.

I guess I can see some problems with respect to development of social ability, the ability to navigate social situations and be in person to be present. I also work, like I said, I work in athletics, I'm a figure skating coach, and so that particular thing also helps to develop those types of skills off the phone. To that matter, I don't have a-- Some people use Instagram, for example, to find-- In figure skating, people post their exercises and some people actually find that really useful. There is some positive.

Brian Lehrer: I understand. There are goods and bads. Matt, thank you very much for your call, I really appreciate it. Liz, as we're running out of time, I want to make sure to get one more topic in here. You reported yesterday that the Legal Aid Society is suing Mayor Adams for failing to implement laws. This is the accusation, failing to implement laws that expand rental aid to low-income New Yorkers. Here's one of the plaintiffs, cancer survivor Marie Vincent, who spoke at the Legal Aid Society's press conference yesterday.

Marie Vincent: My grandson, I've been promising him that we wouldn't be in this situation for much longer. I told him we would be out by October. It is now almost his 13th birthday, and we are still in this current situation. It's extremely hard on him. It's extremely hard on a lot of our families for children to be going through this. I ask that for the mayor to implement the law, that's all.

Brian Lehrer: Liz, remind us of what these laws expanding rental aid were supposed to achieve and what this lawsuit is about.

Elizabeth Kim: This was a package of legislation that the city council overwhelmingly passed last year. The mayor actually tried to veto it, veto the package, but the council overrode the veto. What it essentially does is there's something that the city does, which is provide housing vouchers or rental vouchers to low-income New Yorkers. The legislation seeks to expand the pool of people that qualify for these vouchers. One simple thing it does is let's lower the income threshold so that more people can apply for these vouchers.

The person that spoke in that clip, Marie Vincent, she is pretty much like right, very, very close to that threshold. She's one of the plaintiffs because if the mayor and the city were implementing the law now, she would be able to qualify, and she would be able to get herself and her grandson out of a shelter because she says that she has looked and she has found apartments, but she doesn't qualify for a voucher. She's unable to secure them.

Brian Lehrer: The mayor is suing, and the mayor is being sued. I guess turns out to be the headline for this week-

Elizabeth Kim: That was another thing.

Brian Lehrer: -at city hall. Our Liz Kim covers city hall for WNYC and Gothamist. Thanks as always, Liz.

Elizabeth Kim: Thanks, Brian.

 

Copyright © 2024 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.