Commentary: It’s Time for Virginia Legislators to Pay More Than Lip Service to Social Media Protections for Kids

Last year, the U.S. Surgeon General released a bone-chilling warning on the impact of social media platforms on minors, calling on Congress to issue tobacco-like warning labels. This was followed in Virginia by an executive order from Gov. Glenn Youngkin directing health and education officials to establish guidance for a “phone-free education” in Virginia. As a parent of two young children and a tax-paying Virginian, I would expect that these warnings and the mountain of data justifying them would be more than enough to motivate our state legislators to pass even the simplest of measures to protect the next generation from the negative consequences of addictive screen time.

Yet, when I watched a House subcommittee meeting last week, I was horrified to witness a parade of tech lobbyists, including from Meta, succeed in convincing lawmakers that a bill from Del. Josh Thomas simply requiring parental consent for minors to access algorithmic feeds — which douse users in content from attention and money-seeking strangers — was too much of a burden on parents, “could create confusion for families,” and could lead to an “unsafe” environment for teens, according to Meta lobbyist Jennifer Hanley. And it worked. Committee members paid lip service to the issue and suggested more time for research and education, essentially shelving the bill where it joined several other similar bills tossed aside.

Where have we heard this before? Why, just last year when the same committee paid the exact same lip service to a near-identical bill from state Sen. and educator Schuyler Van Valkenburg. And since then, even more evidence has come forth that demonstrates the undeniable truth about social media use and the state of young people. Over 40% of teens with the highest social media use rate their overall mental health as poor or very poor, according to the American Psychological Association. Recent research from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that 2 in 10 students seriously considered attempting suicide, with 1 in 10 actually attempting suicide. Further, female and LGBTQ students were more likely than their peers to experience poor mental health, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Physical health isn’t any better with 1 in 5 children and adolescents considered obese by the CDC. And education? According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress report released just this week, U.S. students hit record-low reading comprehension scores in 2024. These frightening stats are piling up in the background while Meta rakes in $164 billion in profit and minors stare at their phones for five hours a day.

Opponents of social media regulation for minors and tech lobbyists cling to the claim that sobering statistics about today’s youth cannot be linked to their platforms. They claim that social media platforms help with peer connection, education and skill-building. This is where we must use our commonsense. When kids are glued to addictive social media algorithms, they are not learning to read, they are not moving their bodies, they are not participating in group activities or challenging themselves, and they are not building relationships with friends and mentors. We can see with our own eyes that a screen-based upbringing is unnatural and generates devastating consequences for both individuals and society at large.

Don’t let these companies with billions at stake dupe us into thinking that we should trust them and their flimsy tools and protections. Meta lobbyists assert that they have introduced over 50 tools and protections for safeguarding youth on social media. Most of these tools are easily ignored and their inefficacy is clearly borne out in the statistical and anecdotal evidence.

Corporate lobbyists and executives use the same playbook to kill regulation: “Trust us, you don’t know how our products work. Just let us regulate ourselves.” Corporate self-regulation often leads to devastating outcomes. Just ask families of those killed in Boeing plane crashes or lost to Purdue’s fatally addictive Oxycontin. We are careening down that path by letting the Metas of the world write their own rules.

Virginia lawmakers are indicating that they have no intention of passing anything meaningful to protect minors from social media and screen time — and most importantly, from the corporations that profit off of their addiction. Individual parents can set all the requirements, rules and restrictions they want in their own families. But without the support and oversight of our elected officials, they will always be swimming against a societal current seemingly content with profit-hungry corporations running our children’s lives. Democrats and Republicans have both introduced good bills to address this problem and both Democrats and Republicans have failed to actually pass anything with real impact. It is time for Virginia lawmakers to have the courage and the commonsense to stand up to the tech titans in the room and put children and teens first.

by Cassady Craighill, Virginia Mercury

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