John Thune

Social media has become a big part of Americans’ lives. It’s a source of entertainment and information, a way to connect with friends and family, and a place to shop, do business, and advocate for causes that are important to us. But I don’t need to tell anyone that social media has a dark side as well. Social media can have negative effects on mental health. It can foster negative and divisive engagement and serve as an outlet for illegal activity. And it can be especially detrimental to teenagers’ still-developing psyches.

In the last few years, reports and whistleblowers have sounded the alarm on social media’s impact on young people. In 2021, the Wall Street Journal released a series of reports highlighting, among other things, Facebook’s knowledge of the harm its products can cause, including its own research into Instagram’s impact on teenage girls. Another report revealed how easy it is for teens to be bombarded with inappropriate content on TikTok, a risk-plagued platform with flaws far beyond this one. And many of us have also read tragic stories of eating disorders and suicide linked to social media. The status quo is unacceptable.

For several years now, including my time as chairman, I’ve worked with a number of my colleagues on the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation to address some of these issues. After years of hard work, the Senate recently passed the Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act, which takes important steps to protect young Americans online.

Championed by Sen. Marsha Blackburn, my colleague from Tennessee, this bill provides safeguards for teens by requiring that Big Tech platforms default to the strongest privacy settings for minors. It puts the responsibility on these platforms to prevent and mitigate harm to young people, and it prohibits internet companies from collecting personal information from minors without their consent. These and other measures in the bill are critical steps to protect children online and hopefully begin to reverse social media’s ill effects, of which we’ve seen too much in recent years.

In addition to these provisions, I’m proud that this bill includes my Filter Bubble Transparency Act. One big problem with social media platforms stems from platforms’ ability to decide what information to show you based on a secret algorithm that you can’t inspect or change. Not all algorithms are bad – some can even be helpful, like YouTube queuing up another song from your favorite band instead of something totally unrelated. But algorithms that expose a 15-year-old to inappropriate videos, that’s problematic, to say the least. And unfortunately, consumers are not always aware of just how much of their experience is being shaped by opaque algorithms.

The Filter Bubble Transparency Act puts consumers and parents back in charge by requiring Big Tech platforms to disclose when they are using an opaque algorithm, and it requires platforms to give consumers the option to view content that has not been curated by the secret algorithm. It provides more transparency for consumers and gives them more control over the content with which they interact online. I’m glad to see this bill advance alongside other important measures in this bill.

As always, there’s additional work to be done to update our laws for the social media age. But the Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act is an important step forward in protecting young Americans from harm on the internet. I hope the House of Representatives will soon take up this bill, and I will continue working with my colleagues on this important issue.