In 2023, amid rising reports of social media addiction and mental health concerns, elected officials across the country began the process of holding two of the world’s largest and most controversial social media companies accountable. In a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, members of Congress grilled social media executives, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Shou Zi Chew, the head of TikTok, a company with strong ties to the Chinese Communist Party, about the impact of their platforms on children. But the hearing is just one of the latest measures to bring transparency and accountability to the social media industry.
TikTok is facing lawsuits and legislative proposals designed to limit the use of the app in dozens of states. Leaders in Congress have even introduced legislation to ban TikTok in the U.S. entirely. Similarly, Facebook has drawn the attention of elected leaders, and last fall, 42 state attorneys general filed lawsuits against Facebook accusing the social media giant of knowingly designing and deploying harmful features.
While these efforts take different approaches to holding social media giants accountable, they all aim to address a problem parents like me already know to be true: Social media can be harmful to children, and companies like TikTok and Facebook have chosen to do little about it.
These lawsuits and bills are just some of the latest attempts in a long-running push that includes warnings from the surgeon general, lawsuits and legislative actions at the state and federal levels to hold Facebook and TikTok accountable for putting profits over children. However, instead of changing their behavior, social media giants are fighting tooth and nail to crush any measure of accountability and push the responsibility onto other companies.
As a parent and former member of Congress, I know firsthand how dangerous apps like TikTok, Facebook and Instagram can be for our children and the toll that idle scrolling on social media platforms can take on their mental health.
These companies know their products are harmful. Facebook’s own internal data has shown that its apps expose kids to cyberbullying and contribute to anxiety and low self-esteem. Study after study has demonstrated the harmful effects that TikTok has on its young users. What’s worse is that these companies have designed their apps to be addictive, a fact that compounds the negative effects on children’s well-being. Former executives at Facebook and TikTok have come forward to warn about these issues. Unfortunately, they’ve been ignored.
Facebook and TikTok know all of this. They just don’t want to do anything about it. They want to pass the buck to other companies.
Facebook is leading the charge to push the responsibility for its dangerous product onto others, part of a long-running strategy to avoid accountability for the harms of social media. In the past, the company has invited lawmakers to hold social media companies accountable for harmful content on its platforms, and recently, Facebook launched a massive advertising campaign to require other companies to do the work of getting parental consent and age verification. Mark Zuckerberg even pushed senators to adopt the measure during the Senate’s latest hearing on the harmful effects of social media on children. This proposed solution would not only push the responsibility for social media platforms’ harmful actions onto others, but it would also mandate that sensitive user information be turned over to companies like Facebook and TikTok, which already have a long history of questionable data privacy practices.
Of course, major social media platforms like Facebook and TikTok could in fact go ahead and place an age requirement on their mobile apps right now — that technology exists and is readily available. They could increase the age rating of the apps they own to enable parents to block access on mobile devices by default. The simple fact is that companies like TikTok and Facebook don’t want to lose young users, and they can’t resist pushing for more access to user data. Above all else, these companies do not want to answer lawmakers’ questions, so they are trying to pivot the focus to others.
Lawmakers have a range of options available to them to hold these companies accountable. Officials in Florida and Utah have measures in place meant to educate children and teenagers about the harms of social media and encourage responsible online behaviors. Legislators in other states have taken more direct actions, proposing legislation that would limit the use of social media in schools and bills that would enforce strict age verification requirements for social media platforms at the source, along with age verification requirements to access explicit websites.
Lawmakers should not be fooled by Facebook’s latest ad campaign. Don’t allow social media companies to pass the buck. Hold them accountable for their own actions and make them responsible for their products.
Doug Collins served in Congress as a Republican from Georgia from 2013-2021. He served as ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee. He is host of the Doug Collins Podcast.