I won’t see my daughter grow up because of social media. Don’t let that be your reality too.

By Deb Schmill

At 15, an online party chat was her introduction to a boy who later raped her. The same year, she was the victim of cyberbullying. The publicness and permanence of online bullying makes it a particularly humiliating and harmful act of cruelty. For Becca, this betrayal by her peers caused an additional wound that never healed. Eventually, Becca found an escape from her pain — the illicit drugs she could easily access using her social media. All of the support from family members, friends, her school counselor, and therapists could not compete with a couple of swipes on her iPhone to access drugs. Social media has completely changed the landscape for children and teens. The online world they live in is a place where social validation comes mainly from likes on posts. The constant need for this validation pulls at their attention and impacts their self-image every waking moment. The online world they live in includes easy 24/7 access to adult content, sexual predators, and illicit street drugs and is the perfect platform for children — who are by nature impulsive — to do great harm to one another. We would never put an 8-year-old at the wheel of a car, tell them to start the engine, and let them go. This would not be developmentally appropriate. In its current configuration, the Internet is not developmentally appropriate either. For all the positives the Internet has brought in the form of information sharing and connection to distant family and friends, allowing this powerful tool to evolve as it has with no federal oversight is not only alarming but has led to the type of painful consequences that my family and far too many others have experienced. Because of unregulated tech platforms, there is a generation of children who have become the collateral damage to the tech industry’s greed and Congress’ inaction.

y daughter Becca’s official cause of death is listed as an accidental drug overdose due to fentanyl poisoning. But the painful downward spiral that led to her 2020 death at 18 began — and ended — with the assistance of social media.

Politicians often talk of American exceptionalism, but when it comes to prioritizing our children’s wellbeing, US regulators have not proven to be so exceptional. Our children go to school every day wondering if they will be the next victims of a school shooting. They have watched their hopes for the future be squandered as regulators spent decades fighting against climate action, and now they have become the subjects of an unprecedented tech experiment. The United States has not passed legislation that protects children from online harm since the 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which “prohibits unfair or deceptive acts or practices in connection with the collection, use, and/or disclosure of personal information from and about children on the Internet.” In the legislation, children refers to anyone under the age of 13. 1998 was more than a decade before the advent of some of the most harmful platforms. An equally antiquated piece of legislation, Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, has served to protect today’s social media platforms by stating they are not legally liable for the content their users post. There is virtually no accountability to the government or to the parents who bury their children. Since my daughter’s death, I have met too many parents who have lost children to dangerous online challenges, like the “choking game” (self-strangulation in order to achieve a brief high, which is shared widely on TikTok and YouTube), counterfeit pills laced with deadly fentanyl purchased via social media, or suicide after being mercilessly cyberbullied. Countless other children have been, and are being, exposed to harmful content by algorithms designed to maximize users’ time on platforms. These algorithms pull youth down rabbit holes of toxic content to keep them online as long as possible. The longer users stay on, the more ad profits go to the tech companies.

It’s impossible to say how many young lives have been lost, or seriously harmed, due to the recklessness of the tech industry, but the more important question to ask is: How many more children need to be harmed or die before Congress takes effective action? US Senator Ed Markey has been a leader on this issue and has authored the updated Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. If passed, the bill would prohibit large Internet companies from collecting the personal information of anyone under 16 without their consent and it would ban targeted marketing to those children. Among other things, the bill would create the first-of-its-kind Youth Privacy and Marketing Division at the Federal Trade Commission. Markey is also a co-sponsor of the Kids Online Safety Act. If passed, social media platforms would be required to “provide minors with options to protect their information, disable addictive product features, and opt-out of algorithmic recommendations.” There would be a duty of care established, requiring “social media platforms to prevent and mitigate harms to minors, such as content promoting of self-harm, suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse, and sexual exploitation.” Passage of these bills will help save lives. I loved my daughter with every fiber of my being. It breaks my heart that I will not see her grow up, or hear her laugh again, or feel her hugs again. That is my reality. Don’t allow it to become yours.

Deb Schmill is founder and president of the Becca Schmill Foundation.

The online world they live in includes easy 24/7 access to adult content, sexual predators, and illicit street drugs and is the perfect platform for children — who are by nature impulsive — to do great harm to one another.

There is virtually no accountability to the government or to the parents who bury their children.

A free gaming platform popular with children. Users enter different games and interact with other users through live chat and avatar actions. Launched in 2006, Roblox has 52.2 million daily active users.

YOUTUBE

Launched in 2005 and purchased by Google 18 months later, the video sharing site remains a juggernaut with 15 billion views per day.

ROBLOX

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