WOMEN+POWER: Letitia James

A Gallup poll last year found that half of American teens say they spend more than four hours each day on social media. The uptick in social media use has correlated with a spike in rates of anxiety and depression among young people. This summer, the U.S. surgeon general issued an advisory warning of possible mental health harms caused by social media, and New York City Mayor Eric Adams has declared social media to be an “environmental toxin.”

The New York Attorney General Letitia James is attempting a new approach to address social media companies’ seemingly unlimited ability to shape kids’ experience of their lives and relationships. She’s setting aside content regulation (e.g. banning content that encourages dangerous behavior) and instead targeting the mechanism itself: the social media algorithm. Sometimes called the “newsfeed” or the “infinite scroll,” the algorithm is the system by which the social media platform serves up content to the user that they haven’t directly sought out. The algorithms are informed by the user’s own data, and their goal is to keep the user engaged on the platform for as long as possible.

In close collaboration with the offices of Sen. Andrew Gounardes and Assembly Member Nily Rozic, the state attorney general is proposing two measures:

The Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act would target social media algorithms, prohibiting addictive feeds for kids under 18 without parental consent. It would also prohibit social media apps from sending notifications to kids’ phones between 12 a.m. and 6 a.m. without parental consent. The SAFE for Kids Act would give the attorney general the power to seek $5,000 in damages from the companies for each violation.

The Child Data Protection Act would prohibit companies from collecting personal data of kids under 12 without parental consent and that of kids under 18 without informed consent. Social media companies would have to apply privacy protections when they know that a user is a child, and they would be prohibited from making their services undesirable or unusable to people who don’t consent to the harvesting of their private information.

Both bills have support from Gov. Kathy Hochul, and James told a roundtable that they are expected to be considered as part of this year’s state budget bills – not as standalone bills.