OPINION:
Sixth grader Tristan Casson loved the online challenges he saw on social media. The latest — the “blackout challenge” on TikTok — took his life. This 12-year-old boy in Richmond Heights, Ohio, about a 20-minute drive from Cleveland, died of strangulation. His young brothers found him in his room, unresponsive. Paramedics took the boy to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Tristan is just the latest victim — at least the latest as of this writing. According to recent reports, a minimum of 15 children have died attempting the blackout challenge in the last 18 months. Grieving parents have filed lawsuits. Overall, social media giants are facing an estimated 1,200 lawsuits from parents over their children’s mental health.
But any justice that comes to these families through the civil courts will come too late. That’s why prevention is key. We must recognize the harm inherent in social media for minors — harm not unlike that posed by cigarettes to youths revealed in the U.S. surgeon general’s famous 1964 report on the dangers of smoking. And we must protect our nation’s children.
As the report noted, tobacco use was once thought to be harmless, even “medicinal.” But with the release of that report, Americans could no longer plead ignorance: The evidence shows that smoking is deadly, with long-term negative effects even for those it doesn’t kill.
The data is in for social media as well. Self-harm and suicide rates were steadily declining among young people in the United States until 2008. As social media use among minors has risen dramatically, so have self-harm and suicide rates.
It’s not just the TikTok challenges; it’s also the online bullying, harassment and victimization. For many children, these are relentless. Academic research, polling, tragic stories and common sense all tell us that social media is an addictive product that negatively affects mental health, well-being and safety.
Many social media pioneers recognize this. For example, Sean Parker, Facebook’s founding president, has acknowledged that “God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.”
There’s also the data privacy issue. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott was right to ban TikTok on state-owned cellphones and computers; the Chinese Communist Party retains effective control of the platform, according to the FBI. Data mined by the CCP could be used for “traditional espionage operations,” The Associated Press adds.
The Texas Legislature must act in this session to protect children because, so far, the social media platforms have failed to do so. In fact, they’re not even really trying.
“In 2021, TikTok met with at least two providers of facial age-estimation software, which can distinguish between a child and a teenager with relative accuracy, according to people familiar with the talks,” Bloomberg reports. Yet “a top executive at TikTok nixed the deals, one of the people familiar with the talks says.”
Social media should be treated like any other age-limited, harmful product, and companies should be prohibited from allowing access to children. This is nothing new, really. States already place age limits on numerous products and activities: smoking, drinking, driving, voting, and buying lottery tickets are just a few examples.
Of course, social media still has its defenders. The online tech publication Gizmodo laments that “Texas has it out for social media.” The truth is that social media has it out for our children.
One of us, Rep. Jared Patterson, is a Texas legislator. The other of us, Zach Whiting, served in the Iowa state Senate. But more importantly, we’re both fathers who are very concerned about our children — and the world they’re growing up in. The harms of social media far outweigh any potential benefits.
Children need real interactions — socialization, not social media. They need friends and face-to-face contact. And most of all, they need our protection from the dangers they’re too young to understand. That’s why we don’t let them smoke — and why, after 1964, we held tobacco companies accountable for trying to lure in a new generation of customers.
• Zach Whiting is senior fellow of technology policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Before he joined the foundation, he served as a state senator in his native state of Iowa. Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, represents District 106 in the Texas House of Representatives.
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