Teens and Tech: Lawmakers’ Attention Required
November 29, 2022
“We are on the wrong path when it comes to the lives of our kids and social media, and we need to do everything we can to rescue them from these problems that we have allowed to fester,” Michael Toscano, executive director of the Institute for Family Studies (IFS), told the Register. “We’ve done a mass experiment on our children, and the results our poor.”
The extent of harm from technology, particularly social-media use, is so critical and so out of control for parents that it needs to be a top priority for lawmakers immediately, according to the recent legislative brief “Protecting Teens From Big Tech: Five Policy Ideas for States,” filed jointly by IFS and the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC). The brief cites numerous studies showing a strong correlation between time spent on social media and the degree of mental-health problems in young people.
