▶ 0:19:01Chair Cruz: Good morning. The senate commerce committee will come to order. It's incredibly hard to be a kid right now. All the parents I know, myself included, are deeply concerned about all the time that kids spend glue to screens, watching, and reading insidious content that puts their minds and bodies at risk.
▶ 0:19:27Chair Cruz: Parents are fighting a constant battle to keep their children safe in a rapidly evolving digital world. For instance, there has been a stunning increase in exploitive, ai generated, deepfake revenge porn and images of victims, very frequently teenage girls.
▶ 0:19:51Chair Cruz: Thankfully, congress rose to meet this challenge and passed my and senator klobuchar's bill, the take it down act, which makes it clear that if you create and spread these heinous images of anyone you will face the full force of the law. But there is clearly much more work to be done to protect children online. Given the prevalence of online devices, children are often introduced to screens at a very young age and end up using them for a significant portion of the day.
▶ 0:20:21Chair Cruz: Children ages 8:12 now use screens an average of 5.5 hours each and every day. For teens, it is even higher at eight hours 39 minutes each and every single day. To put another way, more than half of the time that a teenager is awake, he or she is staring at a screen.
▶ 0:20:51Chair Cruz: Parents intuitively know that excessive use of internet -connected devices, like smartphones and tablets, pose a significant physical and mental health risks to children. Even many kids know it's a problem. Surveys routinely show large numbers of teenagers admit to spending way too much time each day on a smart phone. Kids need time to be kids. To experience the real world. Not to get lost in a virtual one.
▶ 0:21:23Chair Cruz: This phone-based childhood, predominately spent on social media, has been documented to lead to social awkwardness, reduced self-confidence, and more sedentary childhood, fragmented attention, disrupted learning, addiction, and social withdrawal. With the introduction of the disorders -- with the introduction of the smartphone we have seen the rise in teen mental health disorders.
▶ 0:21:54Chair Cruz: In 2023, 1 in five children had a mental or behavioral problem diagnosis. We've also seen significant increases in child and teen suicide rates. Something is very wrong. I don't believe it's a mere coincidence, as our witnesses will discuss today, that these harms are arising alongside the early and excessive use of screens.
▶ 0:22:22Chair Cruz: Sadly, parents face further challenges in monitoring and limiting their children's screen time. In part because our education system, fueled by federal subsidies and incentives, has increasingly require the use of internet-connected devices in schools. Most students are now assigned laptops or tablets. Often without guardrails or parental controls. In order to complete their school work.
▶ 0:22:51Chair Cruz: There aren't many parents who think it has become easier to help with school work or to cut down on screen time when schools send their kids home with a personal tablet. There is a role, to be sure, for technology in the classroom, but we should discuss whether assigning personal devices to children is actually improving academic outcomes or doing more harm than good.
▶ 0:23:18Chair Cruz: During the biden administration, not only did congressional democrats give billions of dollars to the fcc to buy personal internet devices for children, but the biden sec sought to bankroll unsupervised access and undermine parental rights by expanding the erat e program to install wi-fi hotspots off-campus including school buses and homes.
▶ 0:23:45Chair Cruz: I was proud that the senate passed my legislation to repeal this program, and I hope that the house lawmakers pass it now and send it to the president's desk. Senator schatz and I advanced the kids off social media act, which this committee passed overwhelmingly in february of last year to help protect kids on social media, predominant use of a smart phone.
▶ 0:24:13Chair Cruz: It meets parents where they are at, it's a real struggle to keep kids off line when you're told all my friends are on instagram or tiktok. It's hard to be the one parent who will not let your kid have a phone or social media account. It says we will hold this big tech accountable to their terms of service. No one under 13 can set up an account and kosma makes that the law.
▶ 0:24:40Chair Cruz: No more social media for children and no more addictive algorithm for teenagers. Kosma also gets a cell phones out of the classroom. No school getting federal taxpayer dollars would allow kids to access social media in the classroom. I am hopeful that the house will pass this bill, the senate will pass this bill, and we will send it to the president's desk to become law.
▶ 0:25:06Chair Cruz: I want to thank the witnesses who are here with us today, and I look forward to this critical discussion about how we can best protect children and empower parents. With that I recognize ranking member cantwell.
▶ 0:25:18Sen. Cantwell: Thank you for calling this hearing and for the witnesses testifying. Children's safety online is not a partisan issue. Every parent, teacher, lawmaker wants the same things. We want kids who are safe, healthy, and able to thrive. The real problem is social media apps are deliberately engineered to hook kids, to keep them clicking, scrolling, and coming back. And they are doing that exactly by design.
▶ 0:25:48Sen. Cantwell: The university of washington released a study last week finding that teenagers spend, on average, more than an hour per day on smart phones during school hours and one in four students spends a quarter of their school day on those personal phones. Most of the time was spent on instagram, tiktok, snapchat, youtube, and video games. Social media platforms build their business models around capturing attention and they have become extraordinarily good at it.
▶ 0:26:18Sen. Cantwell: These companies collect vast amounts of data on children, use algorithmic targeting to feed them content designed to keep them scrolling, because for these platforms engagement equals revenue. Dr. radesky -- am I saying that correctly? You say most digital products used by youth were designed for adults, only retrofitted when usage harms were recognized. And the harms are impossible to ignore.
▶ 0:26:49Sen. Cantwell: End quote. Rutgers university found 20 studies demonstrated a significant relationship between social media use and body image concerns. An australian research team found the tiktok algorithm delivers video after video about dieting and exercise to people suffering from eating disorders. Two thirds of the kids are exposed to hate-based content online. Dr.
▶ 0:27:16Sen. Cantwell: Radesky, you found roughly 40% of teens had concerning trajectories for media addiction, which doubles their risk for suicide behavior. We look forward to hearing more in your testimony. Study after study shows heavy social media use is associated with higher rates of anxiety, depression, and feelings of isolation among youth and people. And one of the reasons why I sought action by congress to do something about tiktok. Parents see this clearly.
▶ 0:27:47Sen. Cantwell: 80% say social media causes more harm than benefit to their children. Congress is obligated to act. But, rather than focusing on threatening e-rate connectivity for school, I think we should pass meaningful protections for kids online privacy regardless of if they are accessing the internet from home or school.
▶ 0:28:10Sen. Cantwell: This includes senator markey's bill, senator blackburn's kosa bill which limits exploitive design and practices. I thank them both for their leadership. Their leadership ultimately protecting children also requires I think comprehensive federal privacy litigation that fully safeguards children in the system that allows everyone's data to be protected.
▶ 0:28:38Sen. Cantwell: The american privacy rights act that I released with the former energy and commerce chair, kathy mcmorris roberts, would establish that standard. In the absence of federal legislation, states and governments have stepped up. School districts across the country have introduced smartphone policies. In the state of washington, 75 percent of school districts have policies limiting access to personal smart devices during the school day. 75%.
▶ 0:29:07Sen. Cantwell: These state efforts are becoming even more critical. I know that we will hear from our witnesses on this as ai accelerates. It amplifies and makes the existing privacy and social media concerns even more imperative. Last week we saw x's grok chatbot generating 10,000 deepfake sexualized image is hour, including nonconsensual images of minors.
▶ 0:29:37Sen. Cantwell: It is unconscionable and unlawful that these images are liberating. The ftc, I believe, should enforce the law, the take it down act that my colleague and senator klobuchar led on, and grok needs to clean up its act. You also highlight how children are showing troubling beliefs around ai chatbot's, including kids think these products can think, have feelings, and can be their friends.
▶ 0:30:04Sen. Cantwell: That is why I joined senator klobuchar in a letter to the consumer product safety commission regarding safety of integration of ai into children's toys. We need meaningful safeguards on ai to address the harms they cause. That is why we cannot let -- we cannot tell states to stand down from protecting their kids, especially when we need congress to put standards in place. Over the last decade, congress failed to act on social media becoming more pervasive to harm kids.
▶ 0:30:33Sen. Cantwell: We cannot make the same mistake now that ai is becoming more pervasive. We need to address online and ai harms before it is too late, particularly for kids. Our goal cannot be to keep kids away from technology. Kids need digital skills for the 21st century. For the economy. For their communication with parents. For schools. The play a role in teaching.
▶ 0:30:58Sen. Cantwell: We need policies designed with children in mind, and we know we need these designs to not be about just maximizing profits. I know that there is a lot of agreement here among members. I hope we can work together. I hope we can move forward on important legislation. Thank you, Mr. chairman.
▶ 0:31:15Chair Cruz: Thank you. I would like to introduce our witnesses for today. Our first witness is jean twenge , a professor of psychology at san diego state university, renowned expert in psychology with publications and the author of several books. Our second witness is Dr. jared cooney horvath, director of lme global, neuroscientist and author specializing in human learning and brain development.
▶ 0:31:47Chair Cruz: Our third witness is emily cherkin, author and founder of the screentime consultant. Ms. cherkin gives professional advice to parents on the dangers of excessive screen time use and its impact on childhood development. She is also an associate professor at the university of washington's evans school of public policy. Our final witness is jenny radesky. Dr.
▶ 0:32:09Chair Cruz: Radesky is an associate professor of pediatrics at the university of michigan medical school and also the codirector of the american academy of pediatric center of excellence on social media and youth mental health. Dr. twenge, we will start with your opening remarks.
▶ 0:32:25Dr. Twenge: Thank you, a member can't well, for the invite. I'm a professor at san diego university. I will base my remarks on the slides that you should have in front of you. I research generational differences. I've been doing that for three decades. I got used for seeing changes that were vague but they would take a decade or two to get there.
▶ 0:32:52Dr. Twenge: Around 2012 in some of the large national surveys of adolescence, I started to see changes that were bigger and more sudden. I had really never seen anything like it. More and more teenagers felt left out. More felt lonely. More felt like they couldn't do anything right, that their life wasn't useful, that they didn't enjoy life. Classic symptoms of depression. Major depressive episodes.
▶ 0:33:21Dr. Twenge: Clinical level depression that requires treatment doubled among adolescents and young adults before the covid pandemic between 2011 and 2019. It's not just symptoms, it's behaviors. Emergency room admissions for self harm behaviors linked to depression doubled among 15-19-year-old girls and young women and quadrupled among 10-14-year-old girls.
▶ 0:33:49Dr. Twenge: The suicide rate in these adolescent age groups doubled over that time period. Which begs the question, what happened around 2012 that might explain that? That was the question that I had when I first started to see these trends. More than 10 years ago. At first, I had no idea. It didn't line up with the economy. It was a big puzzle. Then I came across a pole and things started to fall into place.
▶ 0:34:15Dr. Twenge: One thing that happened at the end of 2012 was that is the first time that the majority of americans own smartphones. It's also when social media use moved from optional to virtually mandatory among middle and high school students. Other things happened at the same time. Adolescents and young adults started spending a lot less time with friends and family in person. That time was nearly cut in half. It also declined among older age groups, but not by as much.
▶ 0:34:48Dr. Twenge: Teens also started sleeping less. The number of sleep was less than seven hours a night, a significant amount of sleep deprivation in this group, started to skyrocket at that time. Teens who spent more time using social media are much more likely to be depressed, particularly among girls. A study in the u.k. Found that heavy users of social media among girls were three times more likely to be depressed.
▶ 0:35:15Dr. Twenge: And this is not just correlation, it is causation at this point. There are a number of studies where people are asked to cut back or give up social media. There was one with the families of children and adolescents done in denmark. They severely restricted children' a screen time. At the end of that time the parents reported that the children were less likely to have anger issues, less anxiety and depression, and fewer total difficulties.
▶ 0:35:46Dr. Twenge: And it's not just mental health. Academic performance among U.S. eighth and 12th graders also began to decline around 2012. The same pattern is seen worldwide in the data set. One reason for that, the use of phones, tablets, and laptops for leisure purposes during the school day. As ranking member cantwell mentioned, a recent study shows high school students in the U.S.
▶ 0:36:15Dr. Twenge: Are using their phones for about an hour and a 10 minutes during the school day, mostly for social media and watching videos. I did a recent study looking at the data set worldwide, and the decline in standardized test scores on science was much more severe in countries where students spend more time for leisure purposes on devices during the school day.
▶ 0:36:45Dr. Twenge: I think this leads to at least four policy avenues. One, follow australia raised the minimum age for social media to 16 and actually verify age. Set a minimum age 16, probably 18, for ai companion apps. Ai boyfriends and girlfriends, sexy chat apps, so we don't have 1212-year-old having their first romantic relationship with a chatbot.
▶ 0:37:12Dr. Twenge: For chatgpt and ai used for research, have guardrails so that those types of conversations that have already led to some tragic suicides do not happen. Third, no phones during the school day ballot to bell -- bell to bell. That school issue devices are used for educational purposes. They block social media, block streaming services like netflix and disney plus, and block pornography sites.
▶ 0:37:44Dr. Twenge: Thank you very much.
▶ 0:37:44Chair Cruz: Dr. horvath.
▶ 0:37:47Dr. Horvath: I am a Dr. jared cooney horvath former teacher turned a cognitive neuroscientist who focuses on human learning. I do not receive funding nor have I ever from big tech. A sad fact our generation has to face is, our kids are less cognitively capable then we were at their age. Since we have been standardizing and measuring cognitive development since the late 1800s, every generation has outperformed their parents. We want to sharper kids.
▶ 0:38:19Dr. Horvath: The reason for this has largely been school. Each generation spends more time in school and bu school to develop our cognition. Congratulations, you see the correlation. Until gen z, the first generation in modern history to underperform us on basically every cognitive measure. From basic attention, memory, literacy, numeracy, executive function, general iq. Even though they go to more school. What happened around 2010 that decoupled schooling from cognitive development?
▶ 0:38:49Dr. Horvath: It cannot be school. Schools basically look the same. It cannot be biology. This hasn't had time to change. The answer seems to be the tools we are using in schools to drive that learning. Across 80 countries, if you look at the data, once countries adopt digital technologies widely in schools, performance goes down significantly to the point where kids who use computers about five hours per day in school for learning purposes will score over two thirds of a standard deviation less than kids who rarely or never touch tech at school
▶ 0:39:21Dr. Horvath: Across 80 countries. Home to the U.S., we have our big data, take any state. A fun experiment, take any state data, compare that to win the state adopted 1:1 technology wisely and watch what happens. The data will plateau and then start to drop. As jean said this is correlated than we want positive. To get causation you need academic research and mechanisms. Explanations for why we are seeing what we are seeing.
▶ 0:39:52Dr. Horvath: We have academic research stretching back to 19 62 that shows the exact same story for 60 years. When tech enters education, learning goes down. One of the biggest ed psychologists out of the u.k. Said edtech is a revolution that has been coming for 60 years. We are going to have to wait another 60, because it ain't doing anything. That is research. Now we need mechanisms. Over the last two decades we have been doing a lot of work and what we call the science of learning. How do human beings learn?
▶ 0:40:23Dr. Horvath: We now have the clear understanding of why tech does not work for learning, and it is all biological. It is not that the tech is not being used well enough, haven't been trained enough, need better programs, we have evolved biologically to learn from other human beings, not screens. Screens circumvent that process. I will not go too deeply into the mechanisms because they can get boring, but know that they are there if you want to talk about them. That leaves two options. Option one, when you know something is wrong do better.
▶ 0:40:53Dr. Horvath: Mea culpa, get tech out of schools, go back to some analog methods, cool. Or two, we can redefine our terms. Redefine what it means to be an effective learner. I want to end with one quick story. Think back to your childhood, your schooling. I guarantee all of us at one point took a test on reading comprehension. Here are 12 questions, they ask you to go beyond what you just read to see what you understood.
▶ 0:41:24Dr. Horvath: Cool. Last year, the sats had a reading comprehension section. Here's what it looked like. Here is a single sentence of 70 five words, one question, fact-based come about that sentence. Next, another sentence of 75 words, one question about that sentence. Next. Last year they redefined reading comprehension to mean 54 short sentences with one question about each. That is skimming not reading. Why would we do that? What do kids do on computers?
▶ 0:41:56Dr. Horvath: They skim. Rather than determining what we want our children to do and generating education towards that, we are redefining education to soothe the tool. That's not progress, it's surrender. -- to suit the tool. That's not progress, it's surrender. There will be talk about social media, but on the voice to remind you that even in schools, it doesn't matter what the size of the screen is. If it is a phone, a laptop, a desktop. It doesn't matter who bought it. Is it school-sanctioned?
▶ 0:42:28Dr. Horvath: Does it have the word education stamped on it? It doesn't matter. These things will hurt learning which will in turn hurt our kids' cognitive development at the time we need our kids to be sharper than we are. Thank you for today. I look forward to talking with you will.
▶ 0:42:43Chair Cruz: Ms. cherkin.
▶ 0:42:44Ms. Cherkin: Thank you for the invitation to speak today. My name is emily cherkin, a parent, author, speaker, and on faculty at the university of washington. I don't accept funding from tech companies for my work. I'm here with a warning. Technology is fundamentally changing childhood and come in the process, undermining parents and threatening the very health of democracy. Let me paint you a picture.
▶ 0:43:09Ms. Cherkin: Today in america, 40% of two-year-olds have a personal tablet. Children 8-18 are averaging seven .5 hours per day on screens outside of school hours. Nearly 90% of american public schools provide children with internet-connected devices for learning. Occupational therapists tell me they have to teach young children how to turn the pages of the book. Preschool teachers report that toddlers don't like getting their hands dirty anymore.
▶ 0:43:38Ms. Cherkin: I know one teenager so addicted to his phone that he seals it in a ziploc bag and brings it into the shower with him. 26% of 13-17-year-olds use chatgpt to do their schoolwork, which they access on laptop school gives them. My own university students have never received a handwritten feedback on their papers. Elementary school children are literally falling out of their chairs in classrooms because they lack the core strength to sit for long periods of time.
▶ 0:44:09Ms. Cherkin: One child viewed 13,000 youtube videos in three months at school on his school-issued laptop. This juxtaposition of childhood innocence and technology's overreach can be seen in a final anecdote. In a class of middle schoolers still losing their baby teeth, they imitate sex noises they hear online. Doesn't technology make our lives easier and prepare children for the future? Unfortunately, no, in spite of rosy claims made by technology companies.
▶ 0:44:38Ms. Cherkin: As a result the wholesale restructuring of childhood around screens is catastrophic for children and families and has led us to four crises. First, a mental health crisis. Screen used before two years of age is linked to accelerated anxiety by age 13. Today one in three teen girls have seriously contemplated suicide. Youth mental health crisis is so dire it has elicited a warning from the surgeon general. Second, a learning crisis.
▶ 0:45:08Ms. Cherkin: As schools double down on edtech products, math and reading plummet. We are quite literally wasting education dollars on ineffective technologies. Third, a crisis in creativity. A 15-year-old in kentucky told me that she feels like the older kids are the lucky ones.
▶ 0:45:34Ms. Cherkin: In an afterschool elementary drama class, she said to the younger children, let's pretend we are flying. They looked at her and said, how? If children cannot pretend to fly, they cannot imagine, and therefore cannot innovate. Creativity means having an original thought. Technology access in childhood doesn't enhance creativity, it kills it. This threatens the future of entrepreneurship in america.
▶ 0:46:02Ms. Cherkin: Remember, today' is tech giants had analog, play-based childhoods. The enmeshment of technology and childhood is creating a crisis for our democracy. Thomas jefferson said that an informed citizenry is at the heart of a dynamic democracy. When children spend hours being fed algorithmically driven rate great content designed to increase engagement they lose the ability to form their own opinions, detected by us think critically. Informed citizens? Hardly.
▶ 0:46:30Ms. Cherkin: All of this is by design, of course. Technology companies build their products to hold our attention and children's brains are especially vulnerable. To make their products they protect companies would have to compromise profits, and they don't want to. As a result, the business model of big tech and edtech is fundamentally at odds with child development and its intrusion into family life undermines the choices parents can make. This is not a kid problem. It is an adult problem that is impacting children.
▶ 0:47:01Ms. Cherkin: Parents especially need help. Parents might delay access to smart phones and social media only for their children to view tiktok videos on a friend's phone. Parents can block youtube at home only to get direct access for their children on school laptops. Senators, I invite you to think about your own childhoods, the teachers who inspired you, the awkward social moments triumphing over a difficult high school essay, making or not making the basketball team. We remember these moments because in the discomfort we learned something.
▶ 0:47:31Ms. Cherkin: Friction is the learning process. When we seek benefits from the convenience of technology, we forget the benefits of struggle. We reached a moment that demands we slow down and build things, even when the tech industry insists on the opposite. Legislation like the kids off social media act is a start, and I believe we can go further. Just like we've done with regulating alcohol and tobacco, we can do so with technology too. Parents are not naïve.
▶ 0:47:58Ms. Cherkin: We know our children will use technology for work and life in adulthood, we just want to ensure they have a childhood first. Thank you.
▶ 0:48:05Chair Cruz: Dr. radesky.
▶ 0:48:07Dr. Radesky: Thank you, chairman cruz, ranking member cantwell. I am so happy to be here for the opportunity to testify on this important issue. I am a development of behavioral pediatrician at the university of michigan where my nic hd funded research lab examines how children and parents use technology, how this impacts parent-child relationships, and child self-regulation.
▶ 0:48:33Dr. Radesky: I do a lot of translation of research into policy or clinical guidance for the american academy of pediatrics, including their center of excellence on social media and kids mental health. Last year I led the first behavioral team at the federal trade commission, where I helped a bunch of really great teams in force cases related to child well-being. My testimony today reflects my own views as a researcher and clinician, not the views of the federal trade commission or any of the commissioners, the aap, or the university of michigan.
▶ 0:49:03Dr. Radesky: Parenting around the technology today is exhausting. And many young people are really struggling with healthy relationships with technology. We often blame ourselves for this, but there are system -level reasons why this is happening. The digital ecosystem has been shaped by a move fast and break things ethos which we digital products get to scale before they can consider what youth really need.
▶ 0:49:29Dr. Radesky: The unique way that young people think, feel, and relate that are different from adults. Most digital products used by youth were designed by adults for adults and retrofitted in minor ways when harms were realized. Tech companies are often designing their products to optimize engagement.
▶ 0:49:49Dr. Radesky: They follow metrics like daily active users, view time, but this is often a direct odds with what we need as parents to get kids a good night sleep or to focus on their homework. That is why it's not sufficient to only talk about screen time, we need to shift our action to be about design. Tech products are centered around youth developmental needs and well-being or designed around profits and market share.
▶ 0:50:14Dr. Radesky: For example, I will highlight a few things from my research lab that have identified some of the mechanisms around engagement-design. We track a lot of kids' devices. Little kids and older kids. We have found a lot of easy access to inappropriate content. We have found preschoolers and between's and teens using apps with mature ratings, -- tweens and teens using apps with mature ratings.
▶ 0:50:46Dr. Radesky: We find manipulative designs. 99% of apps we studied had at least one design that tried to engage kids for longer or monetize their time through ads or purchase pressures, often from characters they trusted. This contributes to compulsive use, conflict, difficulty transitioning away from that device when time is up. We also found a lot of collection and sharing of private identifiers in the 2020 study.
▶ 0:51:13Dr. Radesky: They were sending this data to marketing databases, which kids cannot understand or consent to. And finally, when we track teenagers phones we see a lot of design, like frequent notifications or use of social media with algorithmic feeds that invades other important spaces for youth development, like school, sleep, or having a conversation with your family.
▶ 0:51:35Dr. Radesky: We are seeing the same engagement-based designs be applied to ai chatbot's, and that concerns me because they also carry a further risk of relationship development and dependence. This is all happening within the context of a child mental health crisis and loneliness epidemic.
▶ 0:51:51Dr. Radesky: We hear a lot about kids and teenagers soothing themselves with frictionless feeds while they are conducting ab tests to keep us on longer. That is not ok. Better design exists but cannot compete in the marketplace where products are rewarded for addictiveness and not if they support youth well-being.
▶ 0:52:17Dr. Radesky: I will wrap up by applying some of these lessons from the consumer tech marketplace to the ed tech concerns that have been expressed today. I believe ed tech use needs to be developmentally aligned. There needs to be conversations
▶ 0:52:30About Whether One: One devices are appropriate for kids, especially in k-five. We need effective children software that eliminates distractions. And so many my patients use video games, youtube, or ai chatbot on their school issue to devices, and it's getting in the way of them engaging with the curriculum. We need intentional strategies that prevent use of edtech from downtime.
▶ 0:52:56About Whether One: And we need a rigorous evidence base to make sure that the edtech products that kids are using are really rigorously tested. In summary, I support an approach that puts pressure upstream on tech companies rather than schools. This means of passing federal legislation with strong enforcement mechanisms, like kosa and kopa so kids can participate in the digital world with less risk of harm and have their time and attention respected so they can logoff when they want and live their lives with agency and purpose.
▶ 0:53:27Chair Cruz: Thank you. I want to start with Ms. cherkin. A lot of parents feel helpless right now. They are deeply concerned, how do I keep my kids safe online? They don't know how to. They don't know what to do. My first question is simple. What advice would you give a parent who is scared about their child, their teenager, and what common sense steps can parents take to keep their kids safe?
▶ 0:54:03Dr. Twenge: Really, parents are in a difficult position these days. I strongly believe as parents we shouldn't give up. I have three teenage kids myself so I'm living this every day. First, delay giving that smart phone as long as he possibly can. If you feel like they need a phone, give them a flip phone or designed for kids that doesn't have internet, social media, or ai companion apps.
▶ 0:54:33Dr. Twenge: Delay them and getting social media for as possible. What I hear often is, then my kid will be the only one. They tell me they have to be on social media to have friends at all. That is a complete myth. Kids have so many other ways they can communicate with each other online. They can face time, they can text, they can call, or even better go to each other's houses.
▶ 0:54:56Dr. Twenge: My 19-year-old said to me recently, this is very meaningful and correct, look, if there is someone who will not communicate with you unless it is through a specific social media platforms, that person is not actually your friend. You can find other ways to do this. We do have to hold the line as parents.
▶ 0:55:16Dr. Twenge: It is not easy, and I know that myself, but we can take those steps to keep our kids off social media until at least 16 if not 18 and just put off that smart phone as long as possible.
▶ 0:55:29Chair Cruz: Ms. cherkin?
▶ 0:55:32Ms. Cherkin: Later is better, less is more, relationships and skills before screens. I am a parent of two teenagers who are here today to hear this, and I will tell you that parenting in the digital age is the hardest thing I have ever done and I taught seventh grade for 12 years. I want to extend my sincere empathy to parents were struggling and I often say that this is not our fault but it is our responsibility to do something.
▶ 0:55:59Ms. Cherkin: We are learning at what is good and what is not good when it comes to screens and the children. When we learn better we need to do better. To that point, I believe parents have an opportunity to be the role models for their children. We talk a lot about how this is children's use, but adults are terrible users as well. It doesn't take much to see people on their phones totally distracted. How we behave is how our children will behave, and I really cannot emphasize enough the importance of collective action.
▶ 0:56:29Ms. Cherkin: Being the first parent to say, I will delay, and finding a second and third parent to join you makes this effort easier. We just need to get to a tipping point. To all of the parents who are struggling, you are not alone. This is a pretty universal problem.
▶ 0:56:42Chair Cruz: I have to admit that I find it comforting to hear that both of you are struggling. I am the father of two teenage girls, and I think middle east peace is easier than raising teenagers. I will say, it is striking in the senate. The senate as a place for you have people from very different generations.
▶ 0:57:06Chair Cruz: In my experience in particular the senators on the younger side of things, in their 40's and 50's who have kids at home who are either adolescents or teenagers, are experiencing these same struggles, the same panic, the same, how do I keep all of these forces that want to tear my children apart, how do I protect them from this? Australia enacted a ban on social media for those under the age of 16.
▶ 0:57:36Chair Cruz: This is a yes or no question for everyone. Should the united states consider a similar policy of restricting children from using social media until a certain age?
▶ 0:57:44Dr. Twenge: Yes, 100%.
▶ 0:57:47Dr. Horvath: Yes.
▶ 0:57:48Dr. Radesky: Yes.
▶ 0:57:53Chair Cruz: Senator schatz and I have introduced the kids off social media act, kosma, which would ban children under 13 from social media and prohibit algorithmic boosting for teenagers under 17. It would also get cell phones out of the classroom by blocking social media in most public schools. I'm glad to see that this committee moved kosma out of committee with an overwhelming bipartisan vote.
▶ 0:58:20Chair Cruz: For each of the witnesses, do you agree that kosma lays the groundwork to protect children from excessive screen use?
▶ 0:58:26Dr. Twenge: I think it does. I think it is meaningful progress. I would want to raise the minimum age for social media to 16, but it's a great start.
▶ 0:58:35Dr. Horvath: Absolutely. Step one.
▶ 0:58:38Ms. Cherkin: I agree. It is a start and I would raise the minimum age to 18.
▶ 0:58:44Dr. Radesky: The pros are it enforces under 18 and addresses the feed, critical mechanism. I'm worried it doesn't cover video games or other platforms and it doesn't have duty of care measures.
▶ 0:58:55Chair Cruz: For what it's worth, I would love to raise the age and make it stronger. One of the things to pass legislation is you have to find bipartisan agreement and compromise, and that means you don't necessarily get everything you want. Final question. Dr. twenge, do you think the edtech devices that are being used by our kids, do they come with sufficient guard rails, filters, or blockers to make sure that they are focused on education?
▶ 0:59:24Dr. Twenge: They do not.
▶ 0:59:26Chair Cruz: What should be different?
▶ 0:59:28Dr. Twenge: We need better locks. I.t. Departments, particularly at public schools, are overwhelmed and underfunded and it just have not unfortunately done a good job blocking streaming services, social media, pornography, and so on from the school issue devices, which have become entertainment devices instead of what they should be, which is educational devices.
▶ 0:59:57Chair Cruz: Senator cantwell.
▶ 0:59:58Sen. Cantwell: Continuing on the general questions, I think, Dr. twenge, your research, 2012 and the change in policy, do you think congress should do something on ai because the acceleration of those trends is going to quadruple in problems? Do we need to take action to do something on ai specific?
▶ 1:00:23Dr. Twenge: I think so. We don't have as much research on ai because it is so new. As a parent and as a researcher, I'm even more concerned about the ai companion apps than social media. It's terrifying to think that our kids are having their first relationships with these psycho frantic chatbot's. How will that translate to real human relationships -- sycophantic chatbots? How will that translate to real human relationships?
▶ 1:00:52Dr. Horvath: K-12, taking adults out of the equation, chatgpt is not good for learning. All I care about is the learning stuff. Cognition goes down whenever we touch it. It may be a good tool for adults, but not for kids.
▶ 1:01:06Ms. Cherkin: Absolutely. Ai is making all the existing problems of edtech worse. I don't believe it belongs in the heads of children -- no, it doesn't belong in the hands of children at all.
▶ 1:01:20Dr. Radesky: My biggest concern is attachment and relationships. Kids are wired to want to attach to other humans. It's how they learn their sense of self, what a healthy relationship feels like. The ai companions are exploiting this.
▶ 1:01:34Sen. Cantwell: I want to bring attention, because this committee had a hearing several years ago, about how facebook was specifically using information for agitation purposes. A whistleblower came to say that they knew they were doing it and continued to pursue the algorithms even though they had been informed that they were.
▶ 1:01:57Sen. Cantwell: I think, doctor, Ms., professor cherkin, rage bait, increasing engagement, they lose their ability to form their own opinions, detected by us, and think critically. That is what these agents are doing and many other things.
▶ 1:02:26Sen. Cantwell: It is the engagement is being driven by this anger. Literally, kids are being attacked by agents, by chatbots, the gronk situation, it's like they are purposefully being used against children. Dr. radesky come he said that michigan was working on a few solutions? I brought up all of these bills that we need to pass, the blackburn bill, the markey bill, doing something about ai and privacy.
▶ 1:02:53Sen. Cantwell: What else is michigan doing that is further helping and reining in the bad practices?
▶ 1:02:58Dr. Radesky: Michigan introduced a companion chatbot bill that is restricting the use of companion chatbots that have the potential to encourage self, suicidality, drugs, alcohol, eating disorders, there restricting ai chatbot's from providing mental health therapy, suggesting illegal activities, producing c sam, engaging in a sexual
▶ 1:03:31Dr. Radesky: Way with youth, a way that they've been trying to get more users, and optimizing for engagement. It's important states be able to pass ai bills.
▶ 1:03:39Sen. Cantwell: What about the issue related to tiktok where the chatbots are specifically attacking kids on things like eating disorders, the records information? How do we get the word out that this is what is happening? We are doing a good job evangelizing that we need federal legislation on ai, but what else do we need to get parents to realize that tiktok itself and the tools are used there are attacking kids?
▶ 1:04:07Dr. Radesky: Some social media companies are embedding ai chatbots into their user interfaces, which is one way that kids are discovering them. We need rules about being able to inactivate them without having to pay to inactivate them. We need to make sure that families also can opt out of things, like an algorithmic feed or having the presence of ai chatbots in products their kids are using.
▶ 1:04:37Sen. Cantwell: Clearly people don't understand that tiktok itself is being used this way? So --
▶ 1:04:49Dr. Radesky: I'm not as familiar with the case you're talking about, but our general approach in helping families is number one to talk with kids about what they are seeing. Use news reports as conversation starters. When you hear a case like that, you can say to your kids, are you seeing this in your feed? What are you doing about it? What do you think tech company should do better?
▶ 1:05:12Dr. Radesky: It's a better way to open the conversation, to hear kids' solutions, and motivate them to take a break from tiktok or whatever platform.
▶ 1:05:21Sen. Cantwell: I think we need to be loud and clear that the federal government needs to do something on ai. You hear are telling us the problem with social media, but basically saying ai is way worse. It's time to step up. Thank you.
▶ 1:05:37Chair Cruz: Thank you. Senator curtis.
▶ 1:05:45Sen. Curtis: Thank you, witnesses. I couldn't help but think during your testimony is that I wish I could transport my kids here. They are in their 30's and 40's. My grandkids, 18 of them, who I worry about. I also had a moment of reflection during your testimony as to my childhood. There was a similar conversation at the time about how bad tv was for young kids.
▶ 1:06:11Sen. Curtis: Imagine the difference between me coming home after school and flipping on the tv and seeing content that had been put out there for everybody versus that tv didn't know who I was. Right? That tv didn't have a world full of people thinking ahead that the next time I turned on the tv they were going to show me this content to influence me to do this thing.
▶ 1:06:39Sen. Curtis: And, it's really very, very different because of this vast network that is kind of behind that tv. Right? Targeted at that young child who will turn it on. I have a series of questions that may almost be rhetorical. I will go through them rather quickly. Instead of asking for an answer, you can give me a nod. If you say no I want to hear from you. I want to codify, I think, some of the things that have been talked about into some real specifics to people who might be listening to these hearings.
▶ 1:07:11Sen. Curtis: The first one, are algorithms designed to be addictive? Yes. Do those systems or algorithms often function in ways that resemble addictive or compulsive use patterns? I am getting yes. Do you believe these companies that have -- do you believe these companies have internal data to measure when their products are driving unhealthy use patterns, like compulsive refresh and escalating content intensity?
▶ 1:07:42Sen. Curtis: Does their business model incentivize profit over well-being? For the record, we got unanimous yes is on all of those. -- unanimous yeses on all of those. I was going to ask if you knew about specific research that documented this. I will change that question too, are any of you not aware of data that documents all of this?
▶ 1:08:07Dr. Horvath: There is a court case going on now, I believe in california, that meta and a lot of these companies had to release internal documents. People are going through them now. Exactly what we fear it is coming to pass.
▶ 1:08:23Sen. Curtis: In a hearing in this room before I compared this to the tobacco hearings where executives were brought up and they had data and research that it was harmful and tried to tell us it wasn't. I believe we had a hearing -- I believe not too many years from now we will have a similar hearing with social media companies. For a minute I would like to pay that and talk about the ink -- I would like to pivot and talk about the impact not only on children but everyone.
▶ 1:08:53Sen. Curtis: The algorithm accountability act would finally let people have their day in court if they were harmed by algorithms. Dr. twangy, you have this report specifically targeted -- Dr. twenge, what we know about the impact on teens and young adults? Is the impact similar, less visible?
▶ 1:09:20Sen. Curtis: I understand why we are focusing on kids, but I would like to have that conversation about adults as well.
▶ 1:09:28Dr. Twenge: For young adults we have a lot of data and depression rates have doubled among young adults, perhaps because they were also introduced to these technologies as adolescence, during that critical period. There are several studies as well looking at young adults who, for example, give up or cut back on social media versus those who continued their normal use. What happens after two weeks or three weeks?
▶ 1:09:57Dr. Twenge: Most of those studies show better outcomes. Less depression, more happiness, among those who give up or cut back on social media. Most of those studies were done with adults. We see a lot of the similar effects in adults compared to adolescents and children.
▶ 1:10:17Sen. Curtis: Does anybody else want to weigh in on the effect on adults?
▶ 1:10:19Dr. Horvath: It is exactly what you would expect. I just got back from a trip to vegas, my brother's first time. As we were walking through a casino he said the happiest place on earth. Everyone was sitting there blindly at their slot machines. The same thing is happening with screens. In this room, not calling everyone out, everyone has touched their phone at least once today.
▶ 1:10:41Sen. Curtis: Senator moreno and I were talking about -- [laughter] senator moreno and I were talking about how my adult kids had a hard time learning how to navigate. When they were learning to drive, they were given an app that said turn right or left and they never had to think like we did about how to move around. I think that applies to what you're talking about. I regret that I'm out of time. I would love to continue this questioning.
▶ 1:11:10Sen. Curtis: Thank you for being here, this is an incredibly important topic. I yield my time. >> thank you, Mr. chairman. I've done a lot of work in this area, as you probably know. I will start with you, Dr. twenge. You grew up in wynonna?
▶ 1:11:28Dr. Twenge: Until I was seven and I still have a lot of family in minnesota. >> you are wearing viking purple and prince purple, which we appreciate. You are a proponent of bell to bell bans, and so am I. What outcomes have you seen from schools that have instituted these?
▶ 1:11:54Dr. Twenge: Many. We are building of the research literature but there are several studies and in the past year there have been more and more schools that have instituted bell to bell bans. You get better mental health, better academic performance, fewer discipline issues is a big one that principals report. Some good outcomes that we want to see. >> I think it's good to get those out there. More and more schools are looking at this.
▶ 1:12:24Dr. Twenge: Dr. radesky, social media platforms generated $11 billion in revenue in 2022 from advertising directed at kids and teenagers, including $2 billion in added profits, how with the financial incentives they have and why that should make us act with the number of bills, kids on safety act, and others, talk about the incentives they have that are counter to what we think we should be doing?
▶ 1:12:49Dr. Radesky: When business models are built upon ad revenue generation it means the longer you have a user using your product the more ad impressions you get and you're able to make more money from the advertisers, especially if it is targeted advertising. You can collect more data the more people who watch. This is especially short form video because you can consume a lot more content in five minutes with short form.
▶ 1:13:19Dr. Radesky: That tells the platform so much more about you. What you watched, hovered over, shared. >> the more the kids get addicted to the screen the more information they get in the more money they make? Go ahead.
▶ 1:13:35Dr. Radesky: One of the first studies on kids' apps, we look how many outs were showing up, and it was remarkable how many were popping up in the middle of game. They did banners across the bottom for things like bipolar disorder treatment. >> in your testimony, you expressed concern about ai checkboxes. How do these toys interfere with the' development?
▶ 1:14:00Dr. Radesky: I joined the letter from fairplay concerning -- concerned about ai toys this holiday season, because in early childhood especially kids have so much animism they have a lot of trust and a huge amount of imagination for stuffed animals and other characters. They can become very attached to media characters.
▶ 1:14:25Dr. Radesky: There is research showing that when you interview for-year-olds and five-year-olds about things like an ai assistant, like alexa, they say, I think it has feelings. I think it could be my friend. It would be fun to spend time with if I was lonely. There are philosophical concerns that you are building a relationship with ai that is basically stored in a company server.
▶ 1:14:51Dr. Radesky: There is also practical concerns that play is more supportive of your cognitive flexibility when it is not led by the programmers' ide as.
▶ 1:15:08Sen. Klobuchar: We have seen grok offering photos of women and girls without their consent, to show them wearing little or no clothing, placed in sexually compromising positions, or engaging in sexual acts and posting them on x.
▶ 1:15:26Sen. Klobuchar: I believe that these posts, violations of the "take it down" act that senator cruz and I worked very hard to get done -- the criminal piece of this involves those that are posting. But the platforms are also required to take it down. It is taking effect in a few months. There have been many even conservative commentators who are very concerned about this.
▶ 1:15:58Sen. Klobuchar: Why we need guard rules federally -- how can these intimate images, these deepfakes, impact young girls' psychological well-being?
▶ 1:16:09Dr. Radesky: It has an incredibly negative impact, a sense of shame, suicidality, depression, anxiety. It is usually underestimated. All of these apps are designed for engagement.
▶ 1:16:33Dr. Radesky: I'm the products that are being used in schools are driven by the same engagement process, the game of vacation of educational content is equally concerning for me as well.
▶ 1:16:50Sen. Klobuchar: I was shocked and it shows what we are dealing with right now. Thank you.
▶ 1:16:55Chair Cruz: Thank you. Senator schmitt?
▶ 1:17:03Sen. Schmitt: I think when I was in attorney general my job delved a lot into these issues including a censorship case. It is the triple three-headed sin of you have the criminal aspect which I think everyone can agree needs to be dealt with. You have the under 18 or kid aspect which is the focus here.
▶ 1:17:28Sen. Schmitt: You also have the section 230 protections, which in a perfect world were meant to have an open platform, and that is what you have liability protections. The problem is when social media companies become publishers, not platforms, they should lose that. On the kid aspect -- it is my hope that we can find broad bipartisan agreement on what to actually do about it.
▶ 1:17:58Sen. Schmitt: I want to dig a little bit deeper into I guess the business model. I see you are looking through your research. Dr. radesky, you found that early childhood youtube videos had the highest advertising load, and in some cases the ads for longer than the videos themselves. Why does youtube intentionally overlook this?
▶ 1:18:23Dr. Radesky: There is a huge market for young children's content on youtube. There is a couple reasons for this. One, it is very successful. Two, the parents of young children are exhausted, so they use youtube to occupy kids. So there is tons of ad space to be filled.
▶ 1:18:43Dr. Radesky: There are even -- I have seen youtubers who are now instructing other youtubers on how to create a I generated content for young children, like little nursery rhymes, which we know is a huge source of ad sales. I think there should be limits on the ad load and the way that kid's attention is monetized.
▶ 1:19:04Sen. Schmitt: This is an open-ended question. I am gen x. The big controversy when I was growing up -- saturday morning cartoons were a thing. And there was all of this -- serial ads -- ceral ads. This seems innocuous, but big cereal was in front of kids. How is this different than that?
▶ 1:19:36Sen. Schmitt: I have some idea, but why is this much more significant than that controversy from the 1980's?
▶ 1:19:44Dr. Horvath: When we were growing up and watching tv -- there is an argument to be made that television is bad, but not as bad. Whatever was on the tv, we all watched. There was a certain element of collectivism. Today, it is all individualism. Everything you watch is geared toward you, which means the ads will be geared toward you. It really narrows your identity.
▶ 1:20:15Sen. Schmitt: Study after study shows you that the further down that path you go -- it is really destructive to a kid's mental health. I have a special needs son, but I have teenage daughters. We live this also. As a legislator, you bring your experiences. Dr. twenge, most american teenagers use youtube and tiktok daily.
▶ 1:20:44Sen. Schmitt: You have described tiktok's algorithm as sophisticated and very sticky, meaning the more a child uses it, the more they will be impressed. Do you believe social media platforms are designing addictive features targeting kids?
▶ 1:21:02Dr. Twenge: I do. That is their business model. The more time you spend on it, the more money they make, so they have poured millions if not billions of dollars into those algorithms to make sure people use the app as much as possible. Tiktok in particular, their internal research, they know that that is especially effective with children and young teens because of brain development and impulse control.
▶ 1:21:31Dr. Twenge: They have the biggest problem with spending an excessive amount of time.
▶ 1:21:37Sen. Schmitt: It would be your testimony that they know not just that they can sell more ads, but they know that this is harmful to kids?
▶ 1:21:45Dr. Twenge: That is what the internal research they have done, as well as external academic research, shows, yes.
▶ 1:21:56Sen. Schmitt: Appreciate you all coming here. I know it is not easy to come to washington. It is much harder to deal with adults and first amendment issues and terms of service. With kids, we have the ability to do something about that. Thank you.
▶ 1:22:13Chair Cruz: Thank you. Senator hickenlooper.
▶ 1:22:18Sen. Hickenlooper: Thank you all for being here. Let me start just by recounting an example of how our misconceptions sometimes cloud our decisions.
▶ 1:22:32Sen. Hickenlooper: On the west slope of colorado, a far west rural area, a county school district decided that they were going to ban all cell phones in the school -- the high school, the middle school, everybody.
▶ 1:22:49Sen. Hickenlooper: Of course, the anticipation was that kids were going to hate it and the parents were going to come unglued and what if an emergency -- the same questions raised again and again. They did this anyway, and within three months, there was universal acclaim from the children, every grade level. There was almost no parental disappointment.
▶ 1:23:20Sen. Hickenlooper: Universal acceptance. A recognition that having kids be able to focus and not be distracted, whether you are talking about lunch or in school , became a point of pride. The entire school district was embracing it.
▶ 1:23:37Sen. Hickenlooper: I'm not saying that we should be going out and dictating to every school district in america what they should do, but I think these examples where you see that what we anticipate, what we think is going to be a problem, does not materialize. We are able to actually see a dramatic improvement by letting that local school district, their teachers, their students, actually have control and make the right decisions themselves.
▶ 1:24:06Sen. Hickenlooper: I do think we have to do a better job of training everybody to make sure everybody understands what the risks are. Nearly one third of our students report having at some point during the day personal conversations with ai, using school-provided devices or platforms.
▶ 1:24:28Sen. Hickenlooper: Between one -- one in 10 teachers report receiving training about what they should do if they expect this is the case, how they should respond. There are growing concerns regarding how the emotional development of these kids is impeded.
▶ 1:24:49Sen. Hickenlooper: The issues around dependency and safety, not to mention privacy protections for these tools that now can see so much of kids' digital lives. Dr. burdette ski, how can -- Dr. radesky, how can we better equip our parents and teachers to respond when it becomes clear that a student's ai use is affecting them in potentially a very harmful way?
▶ 1:25:18Dr. Radesky: I think the solutions at a systems level and individual level. On a systems level, I think we need to work with the internet filtering software companies to make sure they are really doing an accountable and thorough job at blocking unauthorized chatbot's from school issue devices, as well as other distractions. Because if we can prevent the upstream harm in the first place, we should.
▶ 1:25:46Dr. Radesky: Second is through the aap center of excellence on social media, we have been providing trainings. We have trained over 25,000 teachers, parents, clinicians, on how to engage with youth around the challenges around social media. We plan to do the same around ai because we are getting more questions about it.
▶ 1:26:09Dr. Radesky: If there can be national trainings to help people talk about it -- kids are going to ai when they are lonely and don't know who to talk to. They are worried. We also need to help with the connection skills and the relationship skills so they can feel like they have human connection.
▶ 1:26:28Sen. Hickenlooper: I could not agree more. I will try to be concise on this question, but I think we are -- one of the issues is active versus passive engagement with technology. I think on maslow's pantheon of scientific success -- I was a geologist, which is down near the bottom. I'm going to get myself in trouble with geologists all over the country.
▶ 1:26:58Sen. Hickenlooper: Less mathematical and technical than many. I spent years working as a mayor, as a governor, on our workforce pipeline, very concerned about the engagement of kids with stem at an early age. All the modern jobs, kids have to be fluent with technology. But we are all discussing some of the downsides of social media and ai.
▶ 1:27:22Sen. Hickenlooper: It feels like quantum computing or semiconductor innovation -- kids have to understand it on a deep level. They can't just have ai answering every question for them without them exploring. I will ask any of you and you can fight over who answers -- how do we build the technical skills required for jobs of the future? How can parents and educators encourage the active over the passive side?
▶ 1:27:52Ms. Cherkin: By eliminating k-12 one-to-one connected devices, because none of the people successful in those skills as adults had those as children. We want our children to be set up for success in the future, we need to give them a childhood filled with analog skills first.
▶ 1:28:10Dr. Horvath: Technology is a tool for experts to offload their skills. I know how to do stats. They are not tools to learn. When they offload before the learning process, they have no clue, and now we are looking at clue, and now we are looking&at whatever the machine tells them. One of my favorite statistics is the only time we measured digital literacy -- it is the only international test on this. 2018, 2023.
▶ 1:28:40Dr. Horvath: Between those years, the percentage of kids who are digitally literate has dropped 82 percent, yet the amount of money we have spent has increased by $6 billion, and the percentage of kids who spend time on the computer every day has gone up by 50%. Clearly, the secret to learning how to use tech is to not use tech. It is to learn analog and then use tech to make that thinking easier. That is what we are seeing.
▶ 1:29:10Sen. Hickenlooper: I could spend an hour having that discussion but I yield back to the chair.
▶ 1:29:13Chair Cruz: And I will say as a word of encouragement, in texas, we love geologists. [laughter] senator moreno.
▶ 1:29:26Sen. Moreno: Thank you. I will start with you, and I was on my phone to make certain my team daughters -- make certain my daughters who are raising a two-year-old and a four-year-old are listening. How much of a threat is this to children? Or set a different way, is there a greater threat to the children of the united states of america then what we are discussing today?
▶ 1:29:54Dr. Radesky: It is in the top threats, I would say. Poverty, trauma.
▶ 1:30:07Sen. Moreno: If you don't have a childhood that allows you to learn at all, you will not be in a good situation to set up for the future.
▶ 1:30:15Dr. Radesky: And all of these in a wreck. Highly stressed families that do not have enough resources rely on technology for managing kids as well as for learning. So there is often -- more privileged families are able to have more boundaries and find more high-quality tech.
▶ 1:30:34Dr. Radesky: We do worry that because it is so ubiquitous, it is interconnected with so many parts of childhood now that it really does feed it, and it is something that is modifiable. It is something that you can regulate and can peel back in some ways when it is not supporting development.
▶ 1:30:52Sen. Moreno: And you are on the same page as me when the question was asked about the age for social media. I think we are dancing around the problem here. Social media is an issue. Why would we allow social media for minors? We have a very strict definition in this country of what it means as a minor. You have to be 18 years old. Could you remotely make the case for anybody under the age of 18 to be allowed to access social media?
▶ 1:31:21Ms. Cherkin: No, I don't believe it is needed. I think it becomes a social pressure, especially if you pick 16. It is the middle of high school. If you say no to pre-16 but yes to the over, how confusing will that be in a multi age school environment.
▶ 1:31:41Sen. Moreno: And 13, you are talking about middle school. It is easy to say under the age of 18 can't use social media. There is all kinds of problems with all these platforms, and we can dance around it. We can say you can do this, that, and the other. At the end of that a, we know a lot of children smoke. There are maybe a few lobbies who say children should have access to cigarettes, but almost this is worse than cigarettes for this generation.
▶ 1:32:11Sen. Moreno: A parent can see my child is smoking a cigarette and stop that behavior. You may not be able to see what they are seeing on social media. And it is almost the same kind of reaction. If you look at people who have addiction issues, when you remove what they have, they go through the froth. I understand that. We see that same kind of behavior with children. Children are on an ipad for half an hour.
▶ 1:32:38Sen. Moreno: I would disagree that that is an economic issue. I have plenty of kit -- plenty of friends was plenty of money who park their kid with an ipad. When you take the ipad away, the kids exhibit withdrawal symptoms. Do you see that?
▶ 1:32:55Ms. Cherkin: Yes, these products trigger reactions in people and especially children that are unsafe. I believe it is in the best interest of all children to limit their access.
▶ 1:33:08Sen. Moreno: Under 18, no social media and no ai, which makes our jobs a lot easier. It is simple. We have a universal understanding that once you are an adult, you are treated differently in this nation of laws. Dr. horvath, does the same logic now apply to smartphones? You are a child. Why would you have access to a smart phone? It makes it more complicated for the parent to have that discussion.
▶ 1:33:36Dr. Horvath: I struggle to find reasons anyone would need social media or a smartphone. As adults, do your thing. Before 18, the only argument is I need to get a hold of my kid. A flip phone has worked for 100 years.
▶ 1:33:52Sen. Moreno: Senator schmitt mentioned that he was gen x, and so am I. We had to see ads on tv to remind our parents to find out where we were. Do you know where your child is? Oh. Now, we track them. I will finish with you, Dr. twenge.
▶ 1:34:13Sen. Moreno: Knowing how existential a threat this is to children, why would we not just say if a school allows children to have access to phones, you should not have federal funding, because you are going to cost us more money in the long run? The point being don't the four of you think, at the end of the, given the weight of this conversation, that we need to do much more, much bolder, to fix this and not be incremental.
▶ 1:34:43Sen. Moreno: Social media has been going on for 20 years. 20 years ago, we could have a conversation about what would this do. We know what this does. Thank you, Mr. chairman.
▶ 1:34:54Dr. Horvath: Exactly -- Dr.
▶ 1:35:00Twenge: Exactly, and solutions that are not incremental seem to do better. No phones during the school time. Kids talking to each other during lunch -- at schools where the institute that, they are checking out books from the library when they never used to do that. Thinking about 18 for social media, one strong argument for that is when you sign up for a social media account, you have to consent to give away your data. What other contract do we allow 17 and under to sign?
▶ 1:35:31Twenge: You have to get parent permission to cross the street in a field trip if you are not 18. Yet we allow 13-year-olds to sign away their data on social media apps.
▶ 1:35:43Chair Cruz: For sake of completeness I will have to note that there are some things for which phones and technology are valuable. Senator moran mentioned he is gen x, as am I. I will point out a meme that I texted to michael he and marco rubio last year, both proudly gen x as well.
▶ 1:36:02Chair Cruz: It is a picture of a shirtless dad feeding a beer to a two-year-old child in his lap, and it says "gen x, the last great generation before all you sissies were born." and there is great truth that we survived, and everyone in gen x is laughing like crazy, and everyone else is looking around like I don't get it at all.
▶ 1:36:27Chair Cruz: If you played with stretch armstrong, you understand what I'm talking about.
▶ 1:36:33Sen. Baldwin: Thank you to this panel. This is a really great opportunity. I want to start with Dr. radesky . In your testimony, you described some of the risks associated with generative ai chatbot's that prioritize user engagement over safety or the well-being of the individual.
▶ 1:36:55Sen. Baldwin: I heard from a constituent who shared a story with me that an ai chatbot had convinced her adult son that he had made a scientific breakthrough, although he had not. It resulted in an over 60 day stay at a psychiatric hospital.
▶ 1:37:20Sen. Baldwin: They wrote to my office after this committee's hearing on the president's ai action, raising deep concern about efforts to deregulate artificial intelligence and create a regulatory sandbox. She wrote, while they prioritize the regulation, my wisconsin family has been destroyed. I ask that the "wall street journal article -- "wall street journal" article telling the story be entered into the committee record.
▶ 1:37:51Sen. Baldwin: I ask unanimous consent.
▶ 1:37:52Chair Cruz: Without objection.
▶ 1:37:55Sen. Baldwin: Dr. radesky, given your research, what would be the risks of giving ai companies waivers from federal or state rules or regulations?
▶ 1:38:08Dr. Radesky: What worries me about all of the cases that have come out since generative ai has come to market is that there is case after case which, in the medical field, we would consider sentinel events, where you need to suddenly stop using what you are doing, do a morbidity and mortality review, go to a root cause, and figure out what went wrong. You don't just keep producing the same product.
▶ 1:38:35Dr. Radesky: I'm worried that if you don't have laws where there is accountability and transparency -- how are you training these models? What are your safety measures? How are you responding when there is an adverse effect? These are not going to be safe products. The concerns are not just the relational concerns I talked about. There is also the safety -- a device giving unsafe advice.
▶ 1:39:00Dr. Radesky: The sycophancy, leading kids down a rabbit hole, and the sexual interactions as well. We need guard rails. I was listening with interest to senator hickenlooper's questions about american students gaining computer science skills, digital literacy skills, and of course it is important for us to retain
▶ 1:39:32Dr. Radesky: Global leadership in this regard. I heard your responses of the best way is in on analog world to teach those skills. How does one go about evaluating educational technologies, things that are porting to be educational?
▶ 1:39:57Dr. Radesky: And, you know, you have researched how various apps that purport to be educational stand up to the science come up with very troubling findings. Dr. radesky, what can congress do to help change the incentive system to favor quality content over manipulative content?
▶ 1:40:20Dr. Radesky: Some of this is about app store design, where I think the most accessible apps, the ones that are downloaded the most, make educational claims. They packed themselves full of ads. But there is really no transparency for parents to know what is high quality and what is not.
▶ 1:40:39Dr. Radesky: So I also think that having some rigorous third-party evaluation -- not evaluations by the company that is trying to promote the app or software product for schools. And then there is the transparency for parents.
▶ 1:40:59Dr. Radesky: If my child is using dream box software every day, I want to know that that has been tested, that it is going to improve his math skills, that it is not selling data to third parties, and it does not have engagement prolonging designs that make them spend hours and hours every day.
▶ 1:41:17Sen. Baldwin: In this realm of educational technology, is there any country or region that is getting it right that we can look to?
▶ 1:41:25Dr. Horvath: Surprise, surprise -- scandinavian countries. Sweden has banned most ed tech for primary years and almost all for secondary. Norway just followed suit. Finland is now -- I give them about two months. They just looked at the data and said this is not working. Whereas the rest of us look at the data and say how can we make it work better. How do I make anthrax better? Maybe the answer is you don't. You go back to not using it.
▶ 1:41:57Dr. Horvath: That was weird. Sorry, y'all.
▶ 1:42:04Chair Cruz: Senator young?
▶ 1:42:08Sen. Young: I'm going to defer to senator sullivan.
▶ 1:42:13Sen. Sullivan: Thank you, and I did not think it was a weird answer. I kind of loved it. It might be the take away from this hearing. Anthrax and big tech. Anyway, Mr. chairman, thank you, and thank you for holding this hearing. It is such an important hearing, and I want to thank the witnesses. We have got to get our arms around this.
▶ 1:42:36Sen. Sullivan: I want to talk a little bit, but again I just want to have you guys touch on some of the facts, and then I want to talk about a bill that I had -- it passed the senate right before christmas. Trying to get the house to pass it. I think it is an important step on one element of trying to address this.
▶ 1:42:57Sen. Sullivan: But you saw in 2021 the surgeon general released an advisory report on youth mental health that said -- it cited a 2019 study that found one in three high school students and half of female students in america reported persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness, and overall increase of 40% from 2009, 10 years. You guys are all experts.
▶ 1:43:30Sen. Sullivan: Do any of you think that is not directly related to the rise of online young americans staring at their iphones six hours a day? Aren't those completely correlated? There is no doubt, right? Does everybody say yes on that? And then next, can't we also conclude -- we have held numerous hearings in this committee -- that the platforms know this.
▶ 1:44:00Sen. Sullivan: The big tech companies know this. And they have not sufficiently protected minors on their own through their own actions. Isn't that another conclusion we can say definitively? You guys are experts. We have had many hearings. One thing that -- I had a bill passed the senate right before christmas.
▶ 1:44:24Sen. Sullivan: It is called "ads for mental health." the idea here is that, as you probably all know, the fcc requires television and radio broadcasters to have public service announcements on the airwaves, because they get a license from the federal government for the use of those airwaves. So we say, hey, you should be doing something positive.
▶ 1:44:55Sen. Sullivan: Public service announcements. On the internet, there is no such requirement, and none of that happens. So my bill is the first of what I'm hoping is two steps. One, it just requires reporting for online advertisers, to report back to us saying here is how much we spend on public service announcements to help
▶ 1:45:27Sen. Sullivan: With mental health or eating disorders or something like that. I can pretty much am anticipating that the number is going to be zero, because they are not doing that. And maybe it is not. That is what we are going to find out.
▶ 1:45:45Sen. Sullivan: But it is also meant to encourage them to kind of get off their fannie's and say if you know this and you are not doing enough, maybe starting to put public service announcements that are positive that can help young people is something you guys need to do voluntarily pretty quick. You have got a lot of money. Some of the richest companies in the planet. Or else, step two is going to be us mandating that they do it.
▶ 1:46:15Sen. Sullivan: The way we mandate, the way the fcc mandates, television and broadcast and radio stations to do it. So I want to get your sense on what you think of this plan, because it is already moving. The house is probably going to pass my bill soon. That is step one. What have you done? The answer is probably going to be not a lot. And we are going to say, step two, we are going to mandate, the way we do television stations and others.
▶ 1:46:44Sen. Sullivan: What do you think of that real quick? I know I am almost out of time. This idea is not going to solve everything, but it could help. We need skin in the game, and it is one element of a policy action that I think could matter. I will just throw it out to all of you.
▶ 1:47:03Dr. Radesky: I think it is great. You should have used plain some of the design of these psa's. Look at new zealand's keep it real online campaign, which uses humor to address some of these stigmatized topics.
▶ 1:47:21Sen. Sullivan: Do other witnesses have a view as we look to move forward in this direction? The senate has already passed the bill. We will have around too soon. We expect they have not done much.
▶ 1:47:33Dr. Horvath: It is a shot over the bow. Anything that gets them waking up.
▶ 1:47:41Sen. Sullivan: Others?
▶ 1:47:43Ms. Cherkin: I agree.
▶ 1:47:46Dr. Twenge: I would say yes, except I don't want that to replace what we have been discussing about minors should not be on those apps to begin with.
▶ 1:47:57Sen. Sullivan: I could not agree more. This is just a suite of policy initiatives. Thank you.
▶ 1:48:04Dr. Horvath: Maybe that speaks to what we are talking about, the educational side. Maybe if those ads are geared toward parents, that becomes an avenue for that.
▶ 1:48:14Sen. Sullivan: If you have other ideas, please submit them to the record. The senate is already going ahead.
▶ 1:48:22Sen. Lujan: Dr., your research centers around child-centered design as a way to minimize harms. Unfortunately, as you stated in your testimony, studies undertaken show repeated examples of platform design that revolves around revenue generation at the expense of child well-being. What elements prioritized by digital product creators are directly at odds with a child's safety and well-being?
▶ 1:48:52Dr. Radesky: One is time spent. If you have design nudges that keep kids on longer when it might be a good disengagement point -- when you are playing a game or interacting with an app, there are lots of points where you could pause and then decide to go do other things. Often we found that on those screens, there are all of these designs that can overload your decision-making, and they offer these little rewards for keeping on going. They don't give you a button to go to the home screen.
▶ 1:49:23Dr. Radesky: It is all of these subtle designs that kids may not even pick up on, that they have not been given the option to disengage. So that is one example.
▶ 1:49:33Sen. Lujan: Can you provide examples of design features that would mitigate harm to children, and others as well?
▶ 1:49:39Dr. Radesky: One would be more stoppage cues, more friction within a digital product. What I mean by friction is that right now most designs are often frictionless or low friction, so it is easy to keep swiping, keep engaging with content, and then kids kind of go on autopilot and are not even self-monitoring to know how much time has passed. Should I stop and do something else?
▶ 1:50:08Dr. Radesky: So there are different design approaches that can slow down the feed, not have as much intermittent rewards showing up, or there could be reminders. Our youth advisory panel at the center of excellence has said if I set a timer for 30 minutes on a social media feed, I want to be reminded what I would rather go and do at that moment. I don't want something that says time is up. They want something that supports their agency in meeting their goals.
▶ 1:50:39Sen. Lujan: This is about a federal program that provides eligible schools and libraries with access to the internet for students. Critical in my state of new mexico, and I would argue every other state, especially rural states. Those that are opposed to e rate often say that it leads to unsupervised screen time, which is not true. There are safety programs that anyone that benefits from the e.u.
▶ 1:51:09Sen. Lujan: Rate program have to comply with. Maybe that is one solution across these internet platforms. The legislation that my colleagues have authored is going to be brought to the floor. Just to set the record straight, e rate no longer funds devices -- that was a program during covid, educational content and curriculum.
▶ 1:51:37Sen. Lujan: It helps schools and libraries by supporting the cost of infrastructure. For those that claim e rate is unsupervised connectivity, the program I was referring to is the child internet protection act, which is something I believe all of us support in the senate. In other words, schools need to block and filter that inappropriate content and that harmful -- the harmful algorithms as well. Connectivity itself is not the issue here.
▶ 1:52:06Sen. Lujan: If we want to protect kids, we need to focus on protecting them. What are the risks to rural and urban schools eligible for e rate, if that federal funding for connectivity is illuminated?
▶ 1:52:18Dr. Radesky: I practice in michigan and treat children with learning development disorders who benefit from vocational training, a lot of that automotive training. A lot of that has to do with computerized software and ai now. So those schools suffer if there e rate funding is pulled, because it is helping teenagers get trained for jobs.
▶ 1:52:40Sen. Lujan: I am also concerned by the increasing use of stories reporting inappropriate act -- inappropriate interactions between ai chat bots and kids. We called out the safety record of grok, including the nonconsensual images of individuals, some of whom are minors. Apparently elon musk did an interview saying he does not even know what we are talking about. I don't know that anything happens at that company without his eyes on it.
▶ 1:53:10Sen. Lujan: Apparently, he is trying to fix it even though he does not know about it. What about that? My concern -- my time is about to expire -- is not just with grok, but there are others that are encouraging suicides. I am hopeful that -- I appreciate the hearing, the expertise of the panel today. That these execs get hauled in here. If they don't want to show up, lets you subpoena power. We are concerned about kids.
▶ 1:53:41Sen. Lujan: Put their asses in those chairs and have them answer questions and face the families. So I am hopeful that one way or another, in one of these committees, one of us has the courage not just to bring them in, but use the subpoena power and ask them when they are going to fix it. Not how. Not if they know about it. When are they going to fix the damaging behavior of lining their pockets with dollars at the expense of the health of kids all across america? Thank you.
▶ 1:54:12Chair Cruz: Thank you, senator lujan, and I would say on that last. Senator blackburn?
▶ 1:54:23Sen. Blackburn: Thank you, Mr. chairman, and thank you for your attention to these issues. As senator lujan was saying, this is something that we do have to address, and it has been absolutely so frustrating that big tech has fought us every step of the way on any of this legislation.
▶ 1:54:43Sen. Blackburn: There are laws in the physical world that prohibit you from endangering children in any way, shape, or form, and in the virtual space, it is the wild west. And you have companies like meta, like snap, platforms like instagram, youtube, that really just don't care. I had one mom I had been talking to about some of these issues.
▶ 1:55:16Sen. Blackburn: She was concerned about what was happening with her child. And I see some of my mom is here. God bless you. This mom said I feel like it is psychological warfare on my child. With what they are being subjected to. So I think we all want to make certain we address this.
▶ 1:55:46Sen. Blackburn: Some of these toys, the ai toys that are out there, I think are very damaging. I have grandchildren, of course. So when you hear them say they want a walk and talk whatever kind of toy, that is a danger signal, as I tell my kids and their friends. Do not buy any of these ai toys. I have got one right here.
▶ 1:56:17Sen. Blackburn: The miko. My staff has been quite entertained with some of these toys and things they will do, but it is very damaging. Of course, we had the kuma bear that was telling kids how to find matches and knives and sexually explicit conversations.
▶ 1:56:41Sen. Blackburn: When you hear some of these toys that try to replace a relationship, and to say I'm your best friend, and please don't go, and take me with you -- this is just so damaging and so -- Dr.
▶ 1:57:01Sen. Blackburn: 20 -- twenge, talk for just a minute about the impact that these have as they impact social development as well as mental health.
▶ 1:57:17Dr. Twenge: We have already seen from social media and smart phones a huge decline in the amount of time that teens are spending with each other. It used to be one of the main activities of adolescence -- hanging out with your friends in person. That has been cut in half. They are not going out with their friends, not going to parties, not doing these things.
▶ 1:57:44Dr. Twenge: And now we are seeing that extend into childhood as well, with the time on the ipad and then we will, I think, continue to see that, if these ai toys become popular as well, if they end up replacing those friendships.
▶ 1:58:00Sen. Blackburn: This will give you gems the longer you play with this. So every day, they reward you. They give you these little gems to stay with them. Talk about what you are talking about, but then carry this over to the addictive nature, the intentionally addictive nature of this.
▶ 1:58:24Dr. Twenge: Whether you are talking about toys or ai companion apps, all of those things increase what they call engagement, what other people would call addiction. They have the rewards. The gems -- all of those things push toward spending more time with the toy, and thus often less time with friends in person, less time talking to family, things that are so developmentally essential.
▶ 1:58:53Sen. Blackburn: And then safety by design. This is something we have talked about with xhosa -- kosa, the importance of having the social media platforms and ai platforms work on safety by design. Why is that important?
▶ 1:59:12Dr. Twenge: All the things we have been discussing in terms of these negative outcomes that we see, in terms of academic performance, in terms of mental health -- we have seen the results of this national experiment on our children and on our teens, and it has been a disaster, and we can do better.
▶ 1:59:34Sen. Blackburn: Thank you very much. Senator markey, you are recognized.
▶ 1:59:38Sen. Markey: Thank you, madam chair. And good morning to everyone. I'm glad that the senate commerce committee is holding today's hearing on screen times impact on young people. I just want to correct one thing that the chairman said in his opening statement, and what senator lujan has said.
▶ 2:00:05Sen. Markey: The chairman asserted that the biden fcc expanded the e rate program and gave unsupervised internet access in schools. That is incorrect. Under the children's internet protection act, all the right recipients, including those who purchased wi-fi hotspots for students using e rate dollars, are required to have an internet safety plan that monitors the online activities of minors, and
▶ 2:00:36Sen. Markey: To implement filters to block of and harmful content. The e rate hotspots program was a carefully crafted effort to ensure low income students have the same opportunities as their classmates. A program that illustrates my approach to technology -- technology can be a force for good, but only if its benefits reach all kids, and only if you put strong guardrails in place to protect them from harm.
▶ 2:01:06Sen. Markey: There is a dickensian quality to the internet. It is the best of technologies and the worst of technologies. It can enable. It can ennoble. It can break. We want the benefits. We want to limit the harms. That is why during the 1990's at the dawn of the internet age, when I was the chairman, I authored laws to close the digital divide for students by ensuring every school and library had access to the internet.
▶ 2:01:36Sen. Markey: That is the e rate from the 1990 six telecommunications act. And the online privacy protection act, which remains the only federal online protection for children. Access to the internet went hand in hand with online protections. Dr. radesky, do you agree that technology can have benefits for students, but must include critical safeguards as well?
▶ 2:02:02Dr. Radesky: Absolutely.
▶ 2:02:05Sen. Markey: Technology has changed a lot since the 1990's. Of course, we anticipated this. It is nothing new. These are the hearings we had in the 1990's. How do we do the good things? I know this hearing happened in the 1990's. I chaired it. Otherwise, we could not have gotten that law passed.
▶ 2:02:30Sen. Markey: But back then, only birds tweeted and tiktok was just a noisier clock made. No one had any idea what this internet thing was going to be. So today, social media platforms collect massive amounts of personal information on their young users, to serve them the most convincing ads possible. Those targeted ads are big business for big tech. In 2022, the major big tech platforms earned nearly $11 billion from U.S.
▶ 2:03:00Sen. Markey: Users under the age of 18. By 2026, that number is exponentially bigger. That is why I have been fighting to pass my children and teens online privacy protection act, which would ban targeted advertising to children, increase the age to 16, and have other protections that are built in, to modernize those protections.
▶ 2:03:23Sen. Markey: I'm proud this committee unanimously advanced it last year, and I am hopeful that the house will take up the strong bipartisan language of that bill. So I want to turn to a technology that poses new risks to kids -- ai chatbot's. Tens of millions of teens across the country are using ai chatbot's to answer questions, find companionship, practice social skills.
▶ 2:03:50Sen. Markey: Although ai chatbot's may have some benefits, I am equally concerned that big tech companies will implement the same exploitable formula to ai chatbot's as they have done with social media. Ai chatbot's can simulate relationships and emotional bonds 14 users, encouraging them to rely on technology for social and emotional needs, and spend hours every day talking to the chatbot. More addictive algorithms. More relentless data collection.
▶ 2:04:22Sen. Markey: To each of the panelists, do you agree that ai chatbot's pose new and unique risks to young people, yes or no?
▶ 2:04:29Dr. Twenge: Yes.
▶ 2:04:32Ms. Cherkin: Yes.
▶ 2:04:33Dr. Radesky: Yes.
▶ 2:04:35Dr. Horvath: Yes.
▶ 2:04:39Sen. Markey: I completely agree. We have learned that big tech companies have no problem exploiting our kids to make a buck. We cannot allow ai companies to treat children as collateral damage to this technology. That is why I am working on new legislation to confront the harms posed by ai chatbot's. It is out there and it is coming for every single child in america and the world. That is what is happening right now.
▶ 2:05:09Sen. Markey: And I look forward to working with all of you and all of the committee members so that we can put those protections in place. The reason I was able to do e rate and the child online privacy protection act was that these companies did not exist yet. There was no google, ebay, amazon. We passed the laws so they could be created.
▶ 2:05:38Sen. Markey: They all came to visit me in 1994, in 1996. Every one of those tech geniuses needed the country to go digital. We were able to do it when they were weaker. Now that they have become the at&t and the cable companies, and we said they need to be more accountable -- we need to work together.
▶ 2:06:05Sen. Markey: Let me turn and recognize senator young.
▶ 2:06:12Sen. Young: Thank you, senator markey, and think you to our witnesses for being here today. We, as you can see, are cycling in and out of the committee hearing. I just was hoping to level set and maybe step back. You may have discussed this already. I have three high school children. I have a daughter who is in college right now.
▶ 2:06:38Sen. Young: The issue of socialization is something I think about, the impact that social media has had on their lives. My kids are fairly resilient and all the rest. But nonetheless, they like other young people are susceptible to all kinds of pressures and influences online. One of the things as a parent I have struggled with over the years is the difficult decisions that parents have.
▶ 2:07:07Sen. Young: It is not as simple as cutting them off because social media is bad. You have to balance all sorts of competing incentives and disincentives. So among the things we have to deal with in terms of socialization is the fact that their friend groups are on. And these are good kids who are on it, who have good families.
▶ 2:07:32Sen. Young: And if they are on, and that is the primary means of communication, which it is, and your kids are not on, they lose their friends. If you are girls, you become the subject of -- that is not the logical outcome. That is why you are here. I want to entertain these conversations. Let's say 70% of the conversations that occur, friend group.
▶ 2:08:01Sen. Young: Is the depth of your friendship as meaningful?
▶ 2:08:03Dr. Twenge: Absolutely, and more so, because it is held real time, one on one. Most studies, the teens who do not use social media at all are the happiest and the least depressed and the most satisfied with their lives. I think that speaks volumes. And of course they have friends.
▶ 2:08:27Sen. Young: Let me die further since you are familiar with the literature. So you can distinguish between the power, the effect, the authenticity of online conversations -- they are an entirely different animal than in person conversations?
▶ 2:08:47Sen. Young: I suspect you would say or maybe find in the research that the more conversation you have with someone in person, the more you communicate, the deeper the relationship. You are saying the opposite is the case online? Or the effect is much weaker or something? Dr. horvath?
▶ 2:09:06Dr. Horvath: Sorry about that. The biological mechanism when you interact life and in person, your body will release a set of chemicals, including oxytocin, a bonding mechanism. When we interact via text online , the brain does not release oxytocin. It releases a precursor to a depression chemical.
▶ 2:09:33Dr. Horvath: In a real sense, we can say biologically textbased communication is not recognized as actual interaction.
▶ 2:09:41Sen. Young: What about face time or zoom or other things?
▶ 2:09:43Dr. Horvath: If you can see somebody's face and hear their voice, you get away from it. That is why the phones with the long cord and you would run into the pantry to talk to your girlfriend or boyfriend -- that work for oxytocin. How many of our kids have face time? The percentage of time on facetime versus twitter -- not as much.
▶ 2:10:05Sen. Young: Very interesting.
▶ 2:10:07Ms. Cherkin: I would add I do think it is a parental challenge because we hear from our children that they feel left out. I also argue that it is convenient to bring parents -- to blame parents, for the tech industry, to blame parents and say your kid is going to be left out if they don't do it. I would see an option here to empower parents to say no because of this research that says it is better.
▶ 2:10:35Ms. Cherkin: We need those courageous parents to take that step.
▶ 2:10:38Sen. Young: Has there been any test? I will give you an opportunity. I find this among the females in my house in particular. I hope people are comfortable with the fact that male and female conversations may be different on balance. I also wonder -- my daughters have very good friends.
▶ 2:11:03Sen. Young: What might the person who is not part of even the online conversations become a subject to those conversations if you are not plugging in enough? Is that something we should not take seriously? Please go ahead.
▶ 2:11:18Dr. Radesky: I think it is important to acknowledge heterogeneity. Kids have different social skills, different interests. Sometimes, the online chat supports that and carries too off-line. Sometimes, it becomes full of drama or conflict. I think one thing congress could consider is investment in more off-line third spaces for youth, where they connect together in person and -- this could be afterschool programs.
▶ 2:11:46Dr. Radesky: It could be sports and music programs. This is where a lot of those social dynamics and skills are learned. If kids have those places to go, they would not necessarily be as online.
▶ 2:12:00Sen. Young: That seems very constructive. I liked that suggestion. Thank you. Thanks for indulging me. We only have five minutes here. We went down a bit of a wormhole, but it was helpful to me. I will recognize senator schatz.
▶ 2:12:16Sen. Schatz: Thank you to all of you, and the audience members. I'm going to say something may be provocative here, which is that I think empowering parents and blaming parents are two sides of the same coin. I think most parents are powerless against these algorithms. And I think that -- Dr. radesky, I agree with 92% of what you are saying.
▶ 2:12:46Sen. Schatz: I'm quite skeptical of this model in which the social media platforms give you the opportunity to either tweak the algorithm, turn off the algorithm -- no one is going to do that. And you might very well be empowering super sophisticated, super fortunate, super engaged parents. The rest of us just need a law. And in some cases, an excuse.
▶ 2:13:14Sen. Schatz: To the extent that there is fomo among kids -- adults too --who are not in the text string or the dm or the snap or whatever it is -- to the extent that it is impermissible, people will find other ways. And yes, we should have afterschool programs which should be subsidized. All the rest of it. But those kids are not going to that thing if they are stuck on their phone because their frontal lobe has been hijacked. Dr.
▶ 2:13:44Sen. Schatz: Radesky, I want to try to ground this conversation in the research, and I would like you to cite the research. Characterizing it, summarizing it -- I would like to know exactly what research you are referring to. What does the research show about algorithmic feeds that maximize user engagement and why are kids uniquely impacted by this?
▶ 2:14:06Dr. Radesky: So a lot of the research is not available for external research -- researchers to look at. It has been done by the platforms. There was an interesting convening -- this was published last year by cunningham. There were academics and people who worked for platforms who got together to think of how to create better feeds.
▶ 2:14:32Dr. Radesky: They were viewing the research on how engagement-based feeds compared to, say, a chronologic feed. They had all this internal research that they reviewed and cited in this publication. They said engagement-based ranking leads to more time online, which is one thing we are talking about. It also leads to more amplification of emotions.
▶ 2:15:00Dr. Radesky: I know that kids --the brains of teenagers are so sensitive to emotional arousal. If you have an engagement-based feed, the users can experience much more intense anger, happiness, and stress. That can lead to more compulsive use.
▶ 2:15:22Sen. Schatz: That is why the bill that is cosponsored by the chairman -- I think the headline about kosa is the 13-year-old. More powerful is the banning of the algorithm feed. Kids are permitted to be unsocial between 13 and 18. My own judgment is if we are going to prevent -- we cannot turn back the clock completely.
▶ 2:15:55Sen. Schatz: There are use cases for social media that are beneficial. Not affirmatively good for your life. Your mom comes in and says you are going to write your brain. They do not actually mean that you are going to write your brain in the same way that we mean right now. I think banning an algorithmic feed for kids is a very powerful tool.
▶ 2:16:23Sen. Schatz: I wanted to drill down -- I have a specific question about schools. I think we should have a bell to bell bayonne. -- ban. There are people on the left and the right who do not love the idea. But honestly, everybody is a federalist or not depending on what kind of objective you have.
▶ 2:16:50Sen. Schatz: To the extent that this is a societal emergency, we have in kosma a social media ban at school hours. My judgment is what senator hickenlooper said. We should just rip off the band-aid and not make this a rube goldberg machine where we think we are going to thread the needle and still allow it.
▶ 2:17:13Sen. Schatz: The problem is there are beneficial use cases and emergency situations for individual kids where they have to work around it if they don't have a phone, right? And yet we are talking about population-wide questions that could be federalized, a whole society that is basically unable to interact. And by the way, learn. Where do youwhat do you think w?
▶ 2:17:47Sen. Schatz: Where do youwhat do you think we quick. >> the bell to bell is absolutely the way to go. Great idea to say no social media. There will be some other distraction. Let's watch netflix on a device. We are all staring at our phones texting each other instead of talking to each other face to face. The devices are distracting.
▶ 2:18:18Sen. Schatz: Social media is one of the reasons. >> social media is particularly terrible for children. Having all the information in your phone is probably not a great way to lock in when it comes to learning algebra or american history.
▶ 2:18:45Sen. Schatz: Putting the thing away and making sure no other kid has access to it is absolutely essential. >> thank you. Thank you all for coming out here. I'm trying to think through and process what you talked about, try to understand if there's any differentiation with the types of features of social media.
▶ 2:19:12Sen. Schatz: I guess I would like to start with you, the different features, they are algorithmic. Is there a privatization letter in your mindset of the things that are doing the most harm?
▶ 2:19:32Sen. Schatz: I'm trying to get a sense of the ecosystem that and whether or not I should be thinking about these features differently or individually. >> a lot of these things do work together, it is difficult to separate them completely or put a number on which is the worst.
▶ 2:19:59Sen. Schatz: Certainly anything that increases the time spent is going to displace time sleeping, time reading a book, exercising, spending time with others. That will be the algorithmic feet. Notifications, any of those features that will push time stress will be on that list of harm.
▶ 2:20:25Sen. Schatz: You mentioned social comparison of trying to strive to have that perfect body on instagram. Adults say days and it striking everybody is always on vacation on facebook? It seems like everybody else's life is so much more glamorous. Cyber bullying, body image issues, unknown adults contacting minors.
▶ 2:20:51Sen. Schatz: One of the reasons I became so convinced that smart phones and social media were behind the mental health crisis were so many possible mechanisms. >> some of it is about time spent, inappropriate content or content that could be emotionally disruptive. Others it's about interacting with other people online.
▶ 2:21:18Sen. Schatz: It changes the way how we might talk to people in person if we get used to talking to somebody who is more anonymized, there might be more repercussions. I would like to bring you in on this, I have an eight-year-old and 10-year-old. I'm trying to think through, my thinking about eight-year-olds and 10-year-olds differently than 16-year-olds and 18-year-old?
▶ 2:21:45Sen. Schatz: We talk about youth, kids at large, does it impact different stages differently? >> I'm glad you brought up the developmental differences. You know some, you may not follow your parents rule. You are concrete in your thinking.
▶ 2:22:15Sen. Schatz: When eight or nine or 10-year-olds start social media accounts they get over focused on those concrete like counts. They may want to accumulate lots of friends not knowing they are child predators. That is why it is very developmentally inappropriate for kids under 13, a couple of studies show to be on social media. Then you get into those 11-13 years where there is more of a drive to connect to peers.
▶ 2:22:47Sen. Schatz: You get a little bit more executive functioning coming out. Once you reach more into 16-18 you get more abstract. Kids could reason a little bit more. I want to say there is a lot of individual variability. My patients with autism and adhd are often lagging.
▶ 2:23:14Sen. Schatz: If we were thinking of child centered design most appropriate , we rely a lot on storytelling, learning about the world. Great movies, great shows. Grabbing things in small bites. >> I know this hearing is focused on youth, help me understand where does it stop?
▶ 2:23:45Sen. Schatz: A lot of these concerns perpetuate, we are trying to distinguish what should we be thinking about when it comes to kids specifically and what should we be talking about at large within our society. I really do hope we come up with bipartisan answers when it comes up to kids. I'm uncertain as they get older, being like we did our part.
▶ 2:24:11Sen. Schatz: Try to help me tease out what are some things we could specifically focus on and what are the broader harms we should be thinking about when it comes to even adults? >> adults struggle with problematic media use and how they have technological interference. I would say comprehensive data across all americans not just kids.
▶ 2:24:39Sen. Schatz: That way we could control what companies are collecting against us and how we are using that data. There are vulnerable adults. >> you answered a lot of questions from a lot of my colleagues, thank you so much. I'm sure we will have more follow-up.
▶ 2:25:11Sen. Schatz: There is real bipartisan focus on this, a lot of urgency as well on the matter. Since I'm the last one here I want to thank all the witnesses for their testimony here. Senators will have until the close of business on january 22 to submit questions for the record. Witnesses will have until close of business on february 5 to respond to questions. The committee stands adjourned.