During a Wednesday appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) detailed his bipartisan bill, the Kids Online Safety Act, to protect children on social media sites.
Blumenthal emphasized that social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram have been targeting children with “destructive content.” He added the platforms were aware of the harm they were doing on children with their algorithms.
“What’s really distinctive about this legislation is, number one, it is bipartisan,” Blumenthal outlined. “Senator Blackburn and I have work on it through five separate hearings, giving those social media tech platforms an opportunity to testify, along with the whistleblower, Frances Haugen, and other experts and researchers. And what we documented here, very strikingly, was the harrowing, heartbreaking stories of kids in addictive, dark places, and destructive emotional rabbit holes, bullying, self-harm, eating disorders that were the result of tactics and algorithms that — that tech platforms knew were doing that harm.”
“What we’re doing in this legislation is to give parents and kids tools and safeguards to take back control,” he added. “Options to disable those addictive product features. And to opt-out of the algorithmic recommendations and protect their information. Because these social media platforms collect information, use it to target kids and drive destructive content to them.”
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