Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
- Parents and advocates are pushing for online safety laws in Washington.
- They cite court wins against social media companies as momentum for change.
- Advocates urge federal laws without preempting state regulations on social media.
NEW YORK CITY — A group of parents and advocates are heading to Capitol Hill this week in a renewed push for online safety legislation, hoping to build on the momentum of court wins against social media companies last month.
Around 60 parents who say their children were harmed or died because of tech platforms are set to travel from around the country to hold a vigil and speaking event Tuesday afternoon on the Capitol's west lawn. They also aim to meet with individual lawmakers to advocate for federal legislation that would force tech companies to change their platforms to better protect minors.
Tuesday's event will include parents who say they've experienced the risks of social media firsthand, as well as youth advocates and parents who say AI tools harmed their children. That includes Alicia Shamblin, who is suing OpenAI after ChatGPT allegedly encouraged her 23-year-old son Zane to die by suicide. (In response to that lawsuit, still in its early stages, OpenAI was previously studying the details of the case and working with mental health professionals to improve its chatbot.)
"It's time for lawmakers to choose: Are they going to side with kids and the safety of our children, or with Big Tech?" said Todd Minor, whose son Matthew died at age 12 after participating in the "choking challenge," which Minor says he learned about on social media.
Minor is one of many parents and online safety advocates who have spent years pushing for greater federal online child safety protections. While lawmakers have grilled tech executives and whistleblowers in public hearings, legislative efforts have repeatedly stalled.
"It's like throwing your body up against a brick wall," said Ava Smithing, founding partner at the advocacy group TheAttentionStudio. Smithing, 25, was inspired to become an advocate after she was served extreme dieting content on social media as a teenager and developed an eating disorder.
Two juries in March found that social media companies knowingly harmed young people, and advocates hope those verdicts will finally persuade lawmakers to act. A New Mexico jury found Meta liable for enabling child sexual abuse on its platforms, and a California jury found Meta and YouTube liable for knowingly addicting and harming a young woman.
Meta and YouTube's parent company, Google, has said it will appeal the verdicts, arguing that its platforms are not addictive. YouTube and Meta declined to comment for this story.
Parents say evidence uncovered during the trials reinforces their personal experiences. They plan to display and distribute copies of the companies' internal documents that were released as evidence, which suggest the firms knew that features such as beauty filters and endlessly scrolling feeds could harm young people. They'll also display 150 roses, representing young people whose deaths they say were caused by online harms.
"We are not going to back down, and now we have evidence which backs up the stories we have been bringing to Congress for years now," Parents RISE! Founder Julianna Arnold told CNN. "We don't want any more hearings."
Advocates want federal lawmakers to pass online safety laws around social media and AI tools without preempting states' ability to regulate.
Lawmakers have, for example, been at odds over the Kids Online Safety Act after House Republicans introduced a version of the bill that would preempt related state laws, which advocates say would undermine the protections they've fought for at the state level. And late last year, President Donald Trump signed an executive order blocking state AI regulations, despite the lack of an extensive federal AI policy.
While states have passed social media and AI youth safety legislation, "at the federal level, we have very few, if not any, bills that are there to protect and provide guardrails," Arnold said. "Everyone has to stop shielding Big Tech."
