Pop-up warnings proposed for youth
Annie Valentina Castanon knows the endless scroll of social media well — one short video on an app like Instagram or TikTok turns into another, she said, and soon a minute turns into hours.
The quick rush from flashy entertainment gives way to anxiety as she worries about losing time that should have been spent on her Advanced Placement classes.
And then depression sets in over the sense that she’s setting her future self up for failure.
The senior at DSST: Montview High School in Denver has joined a push at the Colorado Capitol to treat youth overuse of social media as an emerging public health crisis in the country. Lawmakers have introduced two bills that would charge state policymakers and the social media giants with new responsibilities — such as requiring pop-up warnings late at night that urge heavy users younger than 18 to close the app.
Legislators will soon wade into a public debate over constitutional rights, consumer protections, parental responsibility and quickly evolving technologies whose owners are themselves trying to adapt to evolving research on youth wellness. Some social media platforms have begun adding time limits or alerts on their own.
Valentina Castanon, 17, helped spur a bipartisan bill, titled “Healthier Social Media Use by Youth,” through her work with the Colorado Youth Congress, a leadership organization. HB241136 would require the Colorado Department of Education to create a resource bank for educators and parents about social media’s effects on youth mental health.
It would also require pop-up warnings when young users who have been on a social media app for more than an hour on a given day open it after 10 p.m. The popup would reappear again after 30 minutes of use, then after another 15 minutes, and finally every five minutes the user remains on it. The bill is set for its first committee hearing on Thursday.
The teen was hopeful the bill would make a dent in teens’ overuse of social media but said its passage wouldn’t be enough on its own.
“This bill will help a lot, but it