Sanders: Put limits for youth on phones

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders sent a letter to governors and Arkansas lawmakers Monday calling on them to join her in limiting children’s access to smartphones and social media.

The letter, sent to the governors of every state and U.S. territory and to Arkansas’ state legislators, sharply criticizes the technology, labeling it as the “driver” of a mental health crisis exploding among the nation’s youth, according to a news release from Sanders’ office.

“Big Tech companies got American kids addicted to their products by preying on adolescent insecurities and basic human psychology,” Sanders said in her letter. “The result is a public health crisis that’s devastating childhoods and destroying lives.”

Sanders also sent 200 copies of Jonathan Haidt’s book, “The Anxious Generation” to the governors. She describes the book in her letter as offering “commonsense recommendations” for addressing a sharp rise in depression, anxiety and suicide among the nation’s youth.

Alexa Henning, spokeswoman for the governor’s office, said in an email the book “was paid for with private funds.”

The average American teen spends almost five hours on social media daily, two hours more than the amount required to double a child’s risk of developing mental health issues, Sanders said.

According to the governor, suicide rates have tripled among young teens since smartphones and social media became prevalent, and depression among teenagers has increased by 150%. The rate of self-harm among girls has increased by nearly 200%. Math, reading and science scores have dropped among teens in the U.S. and other developed nations since 2012, she said.

The American Psychological Association released its own report in April on the potential risks of social media on youth. The report, which came almost a year after the association issued a health advisory on social media use in adolescence, describes youth as being hypersensitive to social feedback, such as likes and follower counts, as well as such harmful content as cyberbullying.

A news release from the association criticizes policymakers and technology companies for making too few “meaningful changes, forcing society to continue to search for ways to maximize the benefits of these platforms while protecting youth from their harms.”

In “The Anxious Generation,” Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business, examines an “epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time,” according to the book’s web- site. The book places much of the blame on a “great rewiring of childhood” that began with a decline in play-based activity in the 1980s and was “finally wiped out by the arrival of the ‘phone-based childhood in the early 2010s.”

His previous work, “The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure,” was published in 2018.

Sanders asked governors to collaborate in promoting and implementing four recommendations from Haidt’s book, which he refers to as “The Four New Norms”:

• No smartphones before high school.

• No social media before 16. • Phone-free schools.

• More outdoor play and childhood independence.

Sanders said the issue is a bipartisan one, with conservative and liberal states alike enacting legislation to protect children online.

In April, a coalition of U.S. Republican and Democratic senators unveiled the “Kids off Social Media Act,” a bill intended to limit children’s use of social media. The bill would aim to bar children younger than 13 from using social media platforms and prevent social media companies from sending content to users younger than 17 that is boosted by algorithms, according to a news release from the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. It also includes text from a previously introduced bill meant to block social media access at schools.

Sanders signed legislation last year requiring large social media companies to institute age verification checks for new users, and to require those younger than 18 to get parental permission to open an account. However, U.S. District Judge Timothy L. Brooks temporarily blocked the state from enforcing the law, also known as the Social Media Safety Act, on the day it was supposed to go into effect.

In his 50-page ruling, Brooks called the law unconstitutionally vague because it fails to adequately define which entities are subject to its requirements, with its definition of “social media companies” lacking guidelines to determine a forum’s primary purpose. The judge also said passing age-related restrictions on access to social media platforms doesn’t appear to be an effective approach when “it is the content on particular platforms that is driving the State’s true concerns,” and added that exemptions stated in the law “all but nullify the State’s purposes in passing the Act” and are contradictory to the viewpoint of the state’s own expert witness that “parental oversight is what is really needed to insulate children from potential harms that lurk on the internet.”

That case is ongoing.

Similar measures have become law in other states, though at least several have seen those measures blocked or mired in legal challenges. In February, a federal judge extended a block on enforcement of a similar law in Ohio. Utah also approved an overhaul of its social media laws regarding children’s access in response to lawsuits over their constitutionality, according to The Associated Press.

In her letters to governors and state lawmakers, Sanders blamed “Big Tech-supported interest groups” as being behind the efforts to block such laws.

Henning said Sanders sent her letters to “start a conversation and make this issue one of our next big priorities.” She added the governor’s office is “exploring policies aimed at keeping phones out of classrooms and schools and empowering parents to keep kids safe online.”

She did not elaborate on how those policies might be implemented.

Rep. Charlene Fite, R-Van Buren, said it’s incumbent on adults to protect children with regard to technology. Much of that depends on children’s parents, she said.

“The parents have to be the ones to really set the limits,” said Fite, who voted in favor of the Social Media Safety Act. “But I think probably what we can do is educate, put out some educational messages to parents.”

House Minority Leader Tippi McCullough, D-Little Rock, said she has been trying to study “as much as I can” about the possible consequences of social media and other digital technology with regard to children. However, McCullough, who voted against the Social Media Safety Act, added, “I think social media has an effect on all of us, some good, some bad, but I’m really not prepared to go hard one way or the other at this point.”