Bethan Roberts and her husband don’t allow their two 12-year-olds to have a smartphone or social media accounts. But that didn’t stop a classmate from posting a mean-spirited and hurtful video using a photo of their son on TikTok.
Within in minutes, the video had over a hundred views. Most of those were likely other classmates.
Roberts called the mother of the child who posted the video and was informed they didn’t allow their child to have a TikTok account. That didn’t stop the child from getting one.
“If this child had followed parental limitations, they would not have been on TikTok and would have saved herself and my son and a lot of others from some big feelings,” said the mother who lives in southern Indiana.
After looking into it, Roberts said, the school district indicated its cyber bullying policy didn’t apply to the incident because it was an elementary school.
“I think that school boards should have some sort of standard here,” she said. “Like it or not, social media use and misuse is happening even when well-meaning elementary school parents try to prevent it.”
Across Indiana, the appetite for standards or regulations on how kids use social media is growing. That coincides with more mental-health groups and government agencies sounding the alarm on how social media is contributing to the exploding rates of depression and suicide among teens.
Over the last 12 years, the suicide rate among young people in the United States has increased by nearly 60%. The portion of American high school students who report feeling persistently sad or hopeless has risen to 45%, according to the U.S. Surgeon General.
What regulations on social media should look like to curb those numbers, though, is up for debate.
Utah legislators in March passed the nation’s first law requiring parental consent before kids can sign up for sites like TikTok and Instagram. In California, lawmakers last year directly targeted the companies by requiring they set by default highprivacy setting for kids and describe privacy policies in language teens can understand.
Now, Indiana legislators and school districts are starting to scrutinize how best to deal with mega-companies like Google and Meta that have enjoyed unbridled growth with few regulations for over a decade.
TAXING THE TECH GIANTS
The growing evidence that young girls are more vulnerable to the negative effects of social media than boys is what spurred Indiana Sen. Andy Zay to help craft a bill this year aimed at bolstering mental-health services in the state.
One study from the United Kingdom found girls may experience a negative link between the ages of 11-13. For boys, those ages are 14-15.
House Bill 1517 would have established a new tax on social media sites that have more than one million active Indiana account holders and earn at least $1 million in ad revenue. The tax revenue would have been used on a new program to prevent online bullying, social isolation and suicide.
Zay argued that because sites like YouTube and Facebook contribute to teenagers’ deteriorating mental health, those companies should be required to pay in part for services to help teens.
“I thought it made sense that the players who are a big part of the problem be the investors in the solution,” said the Republican lawmaker.
State Rep. J.D. Prescott (R-Union City), who introduced the legislation in the House, said he liked the proposal because it avoids government regulation on the companies and doesn’t impede Hoosiers’ First Amendment rights.
“I think that’s why the bill that we crafted with the tax and creating resources for those who seek out help was a way to do it without hampering freedom of speech and protecting individual’s constitutional rights,” he said.
The bill was the first to be introduced in Indiana to hold social media companies directly accountable for their role in the rising rates of mental-health problems in kids. But the legislation died in committee and never came up for a vote.
Improving kids’ mental health was ultimately tied to Senate Bill 1, which will provide $100 million over the next two years to expand the state’s mental-health services. Prescott noted he has asked the Indiana State Department of Health to use some of that money to address how social media is hurting Hoosier children.
“When it comes to social media and our youth, I just asked that they … really take into account the harmful effects of social media and how we can try and combat that,” he said.
REQUIRING GUARDRAILS
While Indiana lawmakers debate whether to regulate social media, U.S. Sen. Todd Young of Indiana has joined a bipartisan group of senators proposing new federal rules on how social media companies interact with account holders under 18.
The Kids Online Safety Act, which is co-sponsored by over 30 lawmakers, would require that social media platforms provide minors with options to disable addictive product features and opt out of the constant stream of algorithmic recommendations. Platforms would be required to enable the strongest settings by default. The proposal would also create a responsibility for social media platforms to prevent and mitigate harms to minors, such as promotion of suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse and sexual exploitation.
Young said he signed on to the bill because of growing concerns from Hoosier parents, including himself, about protecting children online. Those parents want social media companies to put up more guardrails for kids, he explained.
“There are a lot of legislative proposals as we grapple with how to address growing concerns among parents about social media,” Young said in an email to CNHI. “Our bill empowers parents by giving them additional tools to safeguard their children and protect their personal information.”
Other federal legislators want to take regulations even further by prohibiting all children under the age of 13 from using social media and requiring permission from a guardian for users under 18 to create an account. That proposal has also garnered support from both Republicans and Democrats.
Young said that there is a “strong desire in the Senate to get something done to protect kids online, and I’m open to all ideas that serve that goal.”
“If we fail to act, the problems children are dealing with more and more — suicide, eating disorders, sexual exploitation and more — are only going to persist,” Young said. “We need to be proactive to ensure social media companies are protecting their users and parents are empowered to be involved.”
The U.S. Surgeon General echoed those concerns again on Tuesday with renewed calls for policymakers, technology companies, researchers and young people to gain a better understanding of the full impact of social media use.
“We are in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis, and I am concerned that social media is an important driver of that crisis — one that we must urgently address,” U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said in a release.
SUING SOCIAL MEDIA
With no federal or state safeguards currently in place, one Indiana school district has taken matters into its own hands.
Fort Wayne Community Schools in March filed a lawsuit against the companies that own TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and other sites, arguing the platforms have contributed to a public health crisis at the district’s 50 schools. Dozens of districts around the nation have levied similar suits.
These companies design and market their platforms to maximize the amount of time students spend on the sites, the lawsuit claims, despite the fact the companies are fully aware of the harm it can cause. The filing compares the effects of social media use to gambling or drug addiction.
“The Defendants’ conduct has led to a mental health crisis among America’s youth,” the district said in its filing. “This is not hyperbole in a lawsuit.”
Due to the harm caused by the social media sites, Fort Wayne schools have been forced to hire additional personnel to address students’ mental, emotional and social health issues, according to the lawsuit.
Students’ use of these platforms has also led to property damage and more disciplinary action to address bullying and harassment, the filing says.
The district is asking that the companies be required to fund prevention education and treatment for “excessive and problem use of social media.”
School administrators did not respond to requests for comment.
Filing a lawsuit isn’t the best way to handle the negative impact social media has on students, according to Anna Mueller, a sociologist at Indiana University who studies how social media impacts students.
But without any regulations in place to curb that impact, it’s a valid option schools are pursuing to hold social media sites accountable, she argued.
“If it’s the only way for now, then I have a lot of empathy and understand why they’re doing it,” Mueller said. “I really wish that legislators and communities would step up to support schools so they don’t have to take on the burden of filing lawsuits like this.”
For Robert s, whose 12-year-old son experienced cyberbullying on TikTok, government regulation doesn’t seem like the answer to the problems posed by social media. She said a reasonable solution is parents keeping their kids off smartphones outside of limited use at home until at least the eighth grade.
But experiencing the darker side of platforms like TikToK, Roberts feels inclined to stay away from it all together.
“Right now, I feel like they should have flip phones for life,” she said. “But I’m sure I’ll cave at some point.
© 2024 Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc.