Addressing the Youth Suicide Crisis: The Clear and Present Danger of Social Media Platforms

Social media platforms, and their harm on youth mental health, suicidal ideation, and suicide, is a public health crisis.

In the bluntest terms possible: Social media platforms are a clear and present danger to America’s youth.

CDC data shows that suicide rates for youth ages 10-14 were declining from 2000 to 2007.

Then, something changed as they nearly tripled from 2007 to 2017 and today suicide is a leading cause of death for youth ages 10-14.

It’s the second leading cause of death for youth ages 10-24.?

What could have caused this catastrophic reversal in youth suicide rates?

A key factor is the emergence, beginning in 2006, of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, YouTube, and other social media platforms.?

There is a cause and effect, and parents of youth are seeing it in the health of their children every single day.

Let me be clear: There are benefits of social media to young people. To marginalized youth, social media connections can be a powerful tool for connectedness, giving them a voice in a world where they are often silenced, and removing a layer of loneliness from their lives that is epidemic.

Those who suggest we should stop young people from having access to social media or the internet itself are living in a world that is not reality. Furthermore, in a nation that values our freedoms, liberty and 1st amendment rights, the notion that censoring or blocking access to what has become an existential tool in our lives is simply not reasonable, rational or responsible.

The fact is Big Tech can keep social media and the internet accessible – and safe – they simply choose not to in the name of profit.

As lawmakers and parents push for real, substantial changes to their business models, Big Tech and its allies try to distract from their platforms’ harms. Big Tech is betting that by pushing initiatives for content moderation, safety ratings and industry-funded reports saying they are actively working to make their products safe – consumers won’t demand actual safety improvements or industry accountability.

All the while spending millions to undermine legislative efforts that would require them to do the things that would actually make their products safe for youth.

We’ve seen this playbook before.

Like Big Tobacco before them, Big Tech uses its power, prestige, and its money to block even the most modest efforts to address the terrifying power of its business model and algorithm to inflict devastation on the lives of young people.?

In Minnesota, despite testimony from children that social media platforms are being used to target, track and traffic them, Big Tech lobbyists fanned out across the capitol to defeat the Minnesota Kids Code. This fairly tame, yet targeted social media platform regulation legislation, would have ensured access to social media for youth while requiring Big Tech to stop exploiting them for profit.?

In Congress, they have ramped up their efforts to defeat KOSA, COPPA (Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act) and a slew of legislation that would protect access to social media for youth but ensure that features that put profit above their mental and physical health are regulated.

At a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this year parents whose children have died by suicide due to their interaction with social media were treated to more of the same from Big Tech.

Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg continued to claim there’s no evidence that his products harm youth, and then, in what can only be described as orchestrated spontaneity, stood before grieving parents and apologized but failed to accept accountability.

Minnesota U.S. Senate Amy Klobuchar remarked at the hearing that how Big Tech continues to fight any effort to be held accountable.

“It’s been 28 years since the internet. We haven’t passed any of these bills … The reason they haven’t passed is because of the power of your companies, so let’s be really, really clear about that. What you say matters. Your words matter.”?

Big Tech’s money has infiltrated nearly every institution in this country. It has been used to elect and defeat candidates for public office that support or oppose its policies. It has been used to fund studies that both support their premise their products cause no harm and to undermine studies that show that they do.?

Directly, or indirectly, their money is at work in the non-profit space to enhance and burnish their reputation while it’s also at work defeating legislation that would hold them accountable for the damage it inflicts on youth.

My own organization, SAVE-Suicide Awareness Voices of Education, has in the past received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from companies like Meta. Our advocacy today on policies they and other Big Tech companies oppose most assuredly means we will not be on their charitable giving list in the future.

Be that as it may be, we, along with a broad, bipartisan coalition of organizations are committed to holding Big Tech accountable for the harm their products do to America’s youth.

During my 30 years in local, state, and national government and politics I learned a lot of lessons about the power of the people against the power of money. The people can, and often do, win.

However, the power of Big Tech’s money is doing more winning today than the power of the people.

It’s time we change the winning percentage in favor of parents who are crying out for the passage of KOSA – and our youth whose lives are being destroyed because Big Tech refuses to fix the things that are injuring and killing children.