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U.S. Senator Katie Britt, R-Ala., and U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, D-Conn., joined Fox News’ ‘America’s Newsroom’ to discuss the Protecting Kids on Social Media Act, a bipartisan bill designed to help protect children from the harmful impacts of social media and empower families that the two senators introduced with U.S. Senators Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii.
The legislation would set a minimum age of 13 to use social media apps and would require parental consent for 13 through 17-year-olds. The bill would also prevent social media companies from using algorithms to feed content to users under the age of 18.
“We came to the table not as a Democrat or a Republican, not as someone who sits on the left or the right side of the aisle, we came to the table as concerned parents. As we look at what is happening across our country, you can look at the data and it speaks for itself – from 2011 to 2019, depression more than doubled in our teenagers in this nation. We look at suicide and look at the increase there and we know the negative effects of social media on our kids. So, this is to protect our children, this is to put parents back in the driver’s seat,” Senator Britt said.
Host Dana Perino asked Senator Britt about the reaction to the bill from parents as she has traveled throughout Alabama.
“Parents want solutions and they want to be put back in the driver’s seat. I have a 13 and a 14-year-old and this weekend at both track meets and basketball tournaments, I had parents saying ‘thank you, thank you for doing something.’ When you look at the graph that you put up earlier too, one in three young women in high school said that they thought about taking their own life in the last year. I mean, Dana, we must do something now. We have to put children above profits of social media companies. Our bill, also between the ages of 13 and 17, does not allow algorithmic use for those children. We believe brain development happens, UNC came out with a study that said that 13-year-olds repeated use of social media actually changed their brain development. So, parents want to be a part of the solution and this bill gives them the opportunity to do that,” Senator Britt stated.
Video of the full interview with Senators Britt and Murphy can be found here.
