Sen. Bennet addresses internet’s midlife crisis
The change from the analog world to the digital one during the past two decades has been vast but fast, with little to no regulation. On Sunday, Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet spoke of his proposals to rein in the dominance of digital platforms at The Internet’s Midlife Crisis conference at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Bennet said that it can be easy to forget how different the world was 20 years ago and how the dominance of the internet has taken over people’s lives. He said that the life before digital platforms took over the world seems like a lifetime ago.
“That was only 20 years ago, but it might as well have been 200 years,” Bennet said.
Bennet said that nowadays, the average American spends approximately two hours a day online, spends more time socializing online than in person and an average person spends approximately 80 minutes a day on Tiktok.
On Thursday, Bennet called on Apple CEO Tim Cook and Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai to encourage them to remove Tiktok from their respective app stores, as the app poses a risk to U. S. national security. In a press release, Bennet said that TikTok collects “vast and sophisticated data from its users” and is obligated under Chinese law to have its Beijingbased parent company hand over its data to the Chinese government.
A CU Boulder student asked Bennet if calling for Apple and Google to take down Tiktok would set a dangerous precedent for apps being removed by private companies. Bennet responded that the concern of American data being given to another country’s government is a matter of national security. Bennet also said that the app could also be regulated rather than banned.
Bennet said that while many digital platforms provide a great deal of convenience, it has not been guided by the public interest but rather by the platforms’ selfinterest and monetary gain. He added that society has not consented to how much personal privacy and identity would be traded to huge digital platforms for convenience and entertainment.
Bennet said that as social media grew more prominent, teen mental health plummeted. He said that teenagers who use social media often are more likely to report themselves as depressed than those who do not use social media often. He added that when he first joined the Senate in 2009, social media was seen as a powerful tool for democracy, but that it did not take long for social media to become a tool against democracy.
“We cannot bury our heads in our digital feeds. We are called upon to defend democracy,” Bennet said.
In May 2022, Bennet introduced the Digital Platform Commission Act, which would create an expert federal body to regulate digital platforms, promote competition and defend the public interest. The act has not yet passed, but Bennet said that there cannot be another 20 years of digital platforms dominating American lives with no accountability.
At the conference, a University of Colorado Boulder student asked Bennet on his plan to get the Digital Platform Commission Act passed. Bennet responded that the act needs bipartisan support to pass. He said that this is the first generation to guide democracy through the digital age.
During the Future of Agencies panel at the conference, former chairman for the Federal Communication Commission, Tom Wheeler, said that the rules created for communication regulation were not made with the modern world in mind. Babette Boliek, professor of law at Pepperdine University, said that there are insufficient laws on digital platform regulation and a huge lack of privacy laws regarding digital platforms.