Sexual predators. Addictive features. Self-harm and eating disorders. Unrealistic beauty standards. Bullying.
These are just some of the issues young people are dealing with on social media 鈥� and children鈥檚 advocates and lawmakers say companies are not doing enough to protect them.
On Wednesday, the CEOs of Meta, TikTok, X and other social media companies are testifying before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee about child exploitation on their platforms, as lawmakers, families and advocates are growing increasingly concerned about the effects of social media on young people鈥檚 lives.
While Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is a veteran of congressional hearings since his privacy debacle in 2018, it will only be the second time for and the first for Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of X. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel and Discord CEO Jason Citron are also scheduled to testify.
鈥淲e understand that they are companies and they have to make profit. But when you鈥檙e faced with really important safety and privacy decisions, the revenue in the bottom line should not be the first factor that these companies are considering,鈥� said Zamaan Qureshi, co-chair of Design It For Us, a youth-led coalition advocating for safer social media. 鈥淭hese companies have had opportunities to do this before they failed to do that. So independent regulation needs to step in.鈥�
Meta will likely be a central focus of the hearing, as the Menlo Park, California-based tech giant has been of states that say it knowingly and deliberately designing features on Instagram and Facebook that addict children to its platforms and .
New internal emails between Meta executives released by Sen. Richard Blumenthal鈥檚 office show Nick Clegg, president of global affairs and others asking CEO Mark Zuckerberg to invest in hiring additional people to 鈥渟trengthen our position on wellbeing across the company鈥� as concerns grew around social media鈥檚 effects on youth mental health.
鈥淔rom a policy perspective, this work has become increasingly urgent over recent months. Politicians in the U.S., U.K., E.U. and Australia are publicly and privately expressing concerns about the impact of our products on young people鈥檚 mental health,鈥� Clegg wrote in an August 2021 email.
He wrote that the company is 鈥渂eing held back鈥� by a lack of investment in these efforts, 鈥渨hich means that we鈥檙e not able to make changes and innovations at the pace required to be responsive to policymaker concerns.鈥� Among the problem areas the email notes are 鈥減roblematic use鈥� of the apps, such as excessive use, as well as bullying and harassment and suicide and self-injury.
The emails released by Blumenthal鈥檚 office don鈥檛 appear to include a response, if there was any, from Zuckerberg. In September 2021, The Wall Street Journal released the Facebook Files, its report based on internal documents from whistleblower , who later before the Senate.
Clegg circled back on the August email in late last year, proposing a scaled-down investment and telling Zuckerberg that the funding is important to ensure the company can back up its 鈥渆xternal narrative of well-being on our apps.鈥� It鈥檚 not clear if there was a response from the CEO.
On Wednesday, Zuckerberg is expected to tout the more than 30 existing tools and features designed to help parents and teens, according to a prepared testimony released ahead of the hearing.
The company has been beefing up its child safety features in recent weeks, announcing earlier this month that it will from teenagers鈥� accounts on Instagram and Facebook, including posts about suicide, self-harm and eating disorders. It also restricted from anyone they don鈥檛 follow or aren鈥檛 connected to on Instagram and on Messenger and added new 鈥渘udges鈥� to try to discourage teens from browsing Instagram videos or messages late at night. The nudges encourage kids to close the app, though it does not force them to do so.
But critics and child safety advocates say its actions fall short of meaningful changes that would address kids鈥� safety.
鈥淟ooking back at each time there has been a Facebook or Instagram scandal in the last few years, they run the same playbook. Meta cherry picks their statistics and talks about features that don鈥檛 address the harms in question,鈥� said Arturo B茅jar, a former engineering director at the social media giant known for his expertise in curbing online harassment who recently about child safety on Meta鈥檚 platforms.
鈥淚nstagram promises features that end up hidden in settings that few people use. Why is 鈥榪uiet mode鈥� not the default for all kids?鈥� B茅jar added. 鈥淢eta says that some of the new work will help with unwanted advances. It is still not possible for a teen to tell Instagram when they鈥檙e experiencing an unwanted advance. Without that information how can they make it safer?鈥�
X, formerly Twitter, said its CEO Linda Yaccarino was in Washington last week to meet with senators to talk about how the company is addressing child sexual exploitation, along with a broad range of other topics that included privacy, artificial intelligence, content moderation and misinformation.
鈥淎s an entirely new company, X has strengthened its policies and enforcement to tackle CSE. We are now taking action on users that distribute this content and also taking immediate action on the networks of users who engage with this horrible content,鈥� the company said in a Friday.
Google鈥檚 YouTube is notably missing from the list of companies called to the Senate Wednesday. That鈥檚 even though more kids use YouTube than any other platform, according to the Pew Research Center. Pew found that use YouTube, with TikTok a distant second at 63%.
鈥淭he thing about YouTube is that it kind of flies under the radar,鈥� said Larissa May, the founder and executive director of the nonprofit #HalfTheStory, which helps teens develop healthy relationships with technology. 鈥淚 think Meta has gotten so used to taking so much of the heat for the issues that young people are facing. But it鈥檚 actually much, much bigger than that.鈥�
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