The White House announced plans to address the nation's mental health crisis, specifically calling out social media's impact on kids and teens. Some members of Congress are concerned about this issue, especially after the leak of damning internal documents from Facebook, including evidence that the company is aware of its negative impact on teens.
According to the White House, President Biden will call on Congress to strengthen privacy protections, ban targeted advertising to children and urge tech companies to stop collecting children's personal data.
Tech typically doesn't play a significant role in State of the Union speeches, and it's possible Biden won't address these points tonight because of the crisis in Ukraine. The president wants social media platforms to make sure their youngest users are safe. The president's attention to her advocacy led to a series of Senate hearings with social media executives.
Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen testifies before the Senate
The President believes that we should have stronger protections for children's data and privacy, and that the platforms should be required to ensure the health, safety and well-being of children and young people.
This language is similar to the rhetoric that Haugen used throughout her appearances in Congress, as she has noted since her interview with 60 Minutes, in which she said that she was upset that Facebook prioritized profits over safety.
The president outlined a plan to invest at least $5 million into research on how social media harms us and what interventions can be used to address these harms. The Department of Health and Human Services will launch a national center of excellence on social media and mental health.
Biden is expected to call on Congress to ban data collection on children. The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) was enacted in 2000 and is intended to restrict tracking and targeting of users under the age of 13, but the law can be enforced if a platform is aware of its users' ages. COPPA isn't easy to enforce since a child can simply click a box and access content not intended for them.
Legislators are trying to make COPPA more effective. Last year, Senator Bill Cassidy and Senator Ed Markey proposed a bill that would make it illegal for internet companies to collect personal data from users between 13 and 15 without their consent. The legislation would allow users and their parents to manually erase the data that a company has collected about them.
Senators propose the Kids Online Safety Act after five hearings with tech execs
The recently introduced Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), brought forth by Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee), contains the concept of an erase button. At a Senate hearing in October, representatives from YouTube, TikTok and Snap all agreed that parents should have the ability to remove their children's online data.
Negative mental health impacts among young women of color are addressed in the White House briefing.
There are searches for black girls, Asian girls, and Latina girls. The briefing says platforms shape how our kids understand what is possible.
Over the last few years, several bills have been introduced in Congress that aim to solve the problems that the White House is talking about, but few have been passed. Sometimes legislation doesn't accomplish what it was intended to do. The Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act was signed into law by the former President. The law was supposed to curb trafficking, but instead it made conditions more dangerous for consensual sex workers.
Biden's commentary on social media and mental health echoes what has been debated in Congress for years. These messages show that Biden is paying attention to the lives of Americans online.
We will report back with any updates on the White House and social media after the president addresses the nation tonight.
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