President Biden, in his address Tuesday night, will call for limits on potentially harmful interactions between children and social media platforms.
The Biden administration has said he will ask Congress to ban targeted advertising targeted at children on social media. According to the newsletter, the president will also say that platforms “should be required to prioritize and ensure” the safety and health of young people, including when choosing designs for their product. And he will call for more research into how social media affects mental health and new analyzes of the algorithms that often determine what someone sees online.
The plans, part of a larger mental health package that Mr. Biden will announce during the State of the Union address, reflect backlash against the biggest tech companies and their ubiquitous products. Parents, activists and politicians say social media services and streaming platforms like YouTube are designed to hook their users by providing them with content the sites know will keep their attention. In turn, critics say young people may be fed increasingly extreme content or posts that lower their self-esteem.
One of the guests joining First Lady Jill Biden for the speech will be Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee who leaked documents that, among other things, showed some teens said Instagram made them feel worse about themselves. Last year, Ms. Haugen spoke to Congress about her concerns.
But the United States is lagging behind many of its allies in taking concrete steps to protect children from extremist posts, addictive content and online data collection. Last year, new regulations came into effect in the United Kingdom that are pushing platforms to limit the data they collect about young people, prompting several companies to implement more child safety features. Australia has just given one of its regulators expanded powers to protect children and adults online. Both the UK and the European Union are also considering additional laws to tackle what they call harmful content on the Internet.