[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 123 (Monday, July 29, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5537-S5538]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                 Eliminate Useless Reports Act of 2024

  Mr. SCHATZ. Madam President, after a long time of talking over the 
ways social media is harming kids and debating what to do about it, 
this week, the Senate is taking some action.
  For years, kids have been swimming in a toxic stew of bullying and 
harassment, glorified violence, and constant false comparisons, and the 
results have been absolutely catastrophic--record rates of anxiety and 
depression, unimaginable levels of suicidal ideation and self-harm, an 
alarming epidemic of loneliness and low self-esteem.
  These things are not a given. They did not just happen overnight. The 
fact that young children as young as 8 or 9 or 10 can feel so sad and 
so helpless that they think they would be better off not living at 
all--that is a uniquely modern malady inflicted by social media.
  Sadness in kids is not new, but a pandemic of youth depression is 
new. The fact that it is a relatively recent phenomenon is also cause 
for us to have some hope. It does mean that this is fixable. This is 
not the way it is supposed to be. This is not the way it has always 
been. It means that if we choose to take some pretty commonsense steps, 
we can finally get kids the help they need, and commonsense steps are 
exactly what the Kids Online Safety Act and the Children and Teens' 
Online Privacy Protection Act are.
  I am proud to cosponsor both bills, which will provide important 
tools to protect the safety and privacy of kids online. I want to thank 
Senators Blumenthal and Merkley for their early leadership on both 
these bills.
  For the first time in the age of social media, Congress is taking 
meaningful action to confront the very worst of the internet's ills. It 
has been a long and difficult journey to get to this moment, not least 
because some in Big Tech have done everything in their power to protect 
profits over kids. So it is to the credit of everyone involved in these 
bills that we are here, overcoming stiff opposition and inertia, to 
finally enact something.
  It is a good step, but we have to do a lot more because we have yet 
to address the fundamental question of, when is it appropriate for a 
child to be on social media?
  We have more than enough data, more than enough lived experience, 
more than enough scientific expertise to know that social media is 
harming kids' brains, pushing them down rabbit holes, plunging them 
into deep and dark places. We know that even adults aren't equipped to 
process the dizzying amount of information available online at all 
times, and that is to say nothing of the hate and the vitriol and the 
abuse served up on an endless loop by coercive algorithms.
  That begs the question--why is a 7-year-old or an 8-year-old on 
TikTok to begin with? Why are young boys and girls, instead of playing 
with their friends outside or learning an instrument, getting 
radicalized or starving themselves because of something they saw on 
Instagram?
  The fact is, we need to delay the onset of social media use. There is 
no safe cigarette. There are no settings that are going to solve this 
problem.
  My bipartisan bill, the Kids Off Social Media Act, which I introduced 
earlier this year with several of my colleagues, will finally set the 
legal minimum age for social media use to 13. It will also ban 
platforms from targeting kids under 17 with powerful black box 
algorithms designed to keep them scrolling for hours on end. These are 
reasonable proposals. These are proposals that can be implemented. 
These are proposals that will pass constitutional muster.
  So the question in front of us is, Why in the world is a 9-year-old 
allowed on TikTok when we know that the stubborn facts operate like 
this: The longer people spend time on your platform, the more money you 
make in ad revenue. OK. That stands to reason. The more people that use 
your site, the more money you get to make. Here is the stubborn fact 
that Meta and Twitter and TikTok and everybody else actually stumbled 
upon. They weren't searching for it, but they stumbled upon it. How do 
you get people to stay on your website? How do you get people to stay 
on your social media platform? The most reliable way to get any user to 
stay on a social media platform is to upset them. So you have these 
publicly traded companies, some privately held, but they all have an 
obligation to try to maximize profit. To maximize profit, you have to 
maximize eyeballs. In order to maximize eyeballs, you have to 
systematically upset, alienate, anger, make sick a whole generation of 
children.
  We don't have to do this to ourselves. It is not impermissible for us 
to set a minimum age for a product for children. There is a compelling 
government interest and there is a compelling moral interest for us to 
take this action.
  The bottom line is, our kids need help, and after a series of fits 
and starts, we are starting to deliver it. Progress, however overdue 
and however incremental, ought to be recognized and celebrated, but 
let's also remember that our work here is just beginning. The scale of 
the ongoing crisis and the needs of kids who are thoroughly overwhelmed 
online demand that we do more, and we must do more in the months and 
years ahead.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

[[Page S5538]]

  The senior executive assistant clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CASSIDY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Louisiana.