kids online safety act

Hundreds of parent advocates urged Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to pass the Kids Online Safety Act in a letter and full-page Wall Street Journal ad published Thursday. The call to action builds on pressure from parents at last week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with the CEOs of Meta, TikTok, Discord, Snap and X, the company formerly known as Twitter. “We have paid the ultimate price for Congress’s failure to regulate social media. Our children have died from social media harms,” the…

Congressional hearings featuring Big Tech head honchos, including yesterday’s affair between the Senate Judiciary and the execs from major social platforms, often get a bad rap. These bitter brawls  have been panned at turns as “kabuki theater” and “hot mess”—and for good reason. With a few exceptions, the primary output of these events tends to be new viral C-SPAN clips.But that doesn’t mean they’re entirely useless. Regardless of whether tech companies face any real consequences (they don’t) or Congress passes any laws…

As a 21-year-old college senior, Zamaan Qureshi is part of a generation that grew up with social media. Like so many of his peers, Qureshi has spent hours staring at social media platforms designed to feed users an endless stream of algorithm-fueled content—some of it potentially harmful—in a bid to retain their attention for as long as possible. “Whether it’s unwanted sexual advances, endless scrolling, or harmful nudges that are keeping you on a platform longer than you want to be, we’re the product of all of those…