Social media is killing children, but House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-LA, is refusing to meet with their grieving parents to pass legislative safeguards to protect other kids. Each day the speaker refuses to act is another day that more kids could meet the same fate as Nylah Anderson, a 10-year-old from Pennsylvania, who died after she decided to try a choke challenge that a TikTok algorithm recommended to her on its “For You” feed, or Carson Bride, a 16-year-old from Oregon, who died by suicide after classmates incessantly bullied him anonymously over Snapchat and other instant messaging apps. While their stories are some of the most notorious, they are far from alone, with a 2023 survey showing that one in three teenage girls had recently considered suicide.
Yet, Speaker Johnson recently called the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) — the most promising path to curbing the harms of social media on young people — “very problematic” just a few short weeks before a new Meta artificial intelligence center was announced in his district. The connection between these two events is potentially notable given that the Senate passed the bill in a nearly unprecedented 91-3 vote in July and given public opinion on this issue is nearly unanimous. A recent poll by Issue One, ParentsSOS, and Fairplay found that nearly nine in 10 Americans across party lines said that Congress should pass laws to protect kids’ online safety, a level of support well above that for regulating or prohibiting similarly dangerous tobacco products. Donald Trump Jr. on Sunday called on the House to take up the stalled Senate bill and Trump’s incoming vice president, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, is a co-sponsor of the bipartisan legislation.
