New York considers social media an environmental health hazard because of its effects on children.
Sexual distractions, addictive elements, feeding suicidality and eating disorders, and unrealistic beauty ideals.
These are the things that young social media users face in the social media world. US children’s rights advocates and lawmakers say social media companies are not doing enough to protect children and young people.
– When it comes to really important privacy and security decisions, profits should not be the first thing on the minds of these social media companies, says the chairman Zamaan Qureishi About the youth coalition called Design It For Us, whose goal is to make social media safer.
So, on Wednesday, the leaders of Meta, Tiktok, X, Snap and other social media giants will be heard by the Senate Legal Committee in the United States.
For example, the CEO of Meta Mark Zuckerberg is already a veteran of congressional hearings, but for example X’s To Linda Yaccarino this is the first time I have to answer senators’ questions.
According to the news agency AP, Meta has recently captured child safety features and is starting to hide content related to suicide, self-harm and eating disorders from the accounts of teenage Facebook and Instagram users.
New York declared soma a health hazard
Mayor of New York Eric Adams announced last week in his annual State of the City address that New York will now classify social media as an environmental health hazard because of its harmful effects on children.
– Companies like Tiktok, YouTube and Facebook are fueling a mental health crisis when they design their platforms with dangerous and addictive features. We cannot watch from the sidelines how social media giants fund our children’s private and mental health, said Adams.
The city of New York published a warning about the effects of social media on the health of young people – and of course published it on social media.
Based on the warning, the New York health agency urges parents to delay their children’s access to social media and smartphones until they are 14 years old. The agency also urges legislators to tighten the laws protecting children as social media users.
New York’s guidelines include statistics from 2021, when 77 percent of New York’s middle school and high school students spent at least three hours a day on their terminals or smartphones, excluding death tasks.
In the United States, efforts have been made in the past to protect young social media users with legislation. Last year, the state of Utah became the first state to pass laws that significantly restrict the use of social media by minors.
See what it’s all about in the video below.
AP
Also used as background material: Axios, CBS News, ABC News