By Michael Brand
Multiple times a year, Congress holds hearings where Representatives and Senators question social media companies on their current practices. At almost every single one of these hearings it becomes apparent that those representing us in Congress have little to no understanding of the dangers that social media presents. From taking our data and selling into advertisers, to spreading misinformation, to cyberbullying and stalking, social media is a dangerous platform. The federal government has done little to regulate it.
Fortunately, state governments are making up for where the federal government has failed. Last week, California’s Congress passed The California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act. The bi-partisan bill “introduced by state representatives Buffy Wicks (D), Jordan Cunningham (R) and Cottie Petrie-Norris (D), will ‘require a business that provides an online service, product, or feature likely to be accessed by children to comply with specified requirements' ” (Oshin). The bill passed unanimously in both chambers of legislature, and moves to Governor Newson’s desk (Trackbill). Its unanimous approval is indicative of the great amount of effort policy makers put into researching the solutions this bill will implement.
California legislators modeled their regulations off of those overseas; for example in the “United Kingdom Google has made safe search its default browsing mode for anyone under age 18, YouTube has turned off autoplay for users who are minors, and TikTok and Instagram have disabled direct messaging between children and adults” (Willon and Contreras). Failing to comply could mean catastrophic consequences for companies. With over 2.4 million children in California and a company being “fined up to $2,500 per affected child for each violation,” there are billions at stake for social media services (Mai-Duc and Bobrowsky). As a result, a handful of companies tried to lobby against this piece of legislation. All of them failed.
California has stepped up for a federal government that has failed to do enough. California has become a “pioneer in children’s online safety and data privacy, enacting protections over the last decade that dozens of other states have replicated” (Singer). While the federal government does effectively nothing, states taking action has been a common theme as “state legislators have introduced more than 100 bills in the past year aiming to regulate how social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter handle their users’ posts” (Kern). Just like the Federalists intended when writing our Constitution, states have become laboratories of democracy, learning from the mistakes and successes of other states, and passing legislation accordingly.
One of the great things about our federalist system is that it has two levels of government. While the federal government does close to nothing about social media, our state governments are able to pass regulations curtailed to those they represent. Having 50 state governments allows us to run many experiments, taking the best parts of each of them. California comes at the forefront of social media regulation. State governments have realized that uninformed congressional hearings are not enough in the age of targeting, misinformation and stalking. Instead of doing nothing, states like California are passing smart common sense legislation to protect its citizens from the harms of social media in a way the federal government never has.
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