(The Center Square) – As the federal government takes a closer look at funding for telecommunications and internet services, Gov. J.B. Pritzker says it’s about time social media companies pay for the damage they’ve done to kids.
In a Substack article published on Tuesday, Pritzker discussed his view of Meta’s recent agreement to pay $17.1 billion and implement safety standards.
The governor said parents and teachers consistently tell him they are worried about what social media is doing to kids.
“Unfortunately, Big Tech has never shared their concern. In fact, just the opposite: tech companies design these algorithms to be addictive,” Pritzker wrote.
The governor said he was thrilled that House Bill 5511, the Children’s Social Media Safety Act, passed both chambers of the state legislature with unanimous, bipartisan support this spring.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke at the Live Real Life Symposium in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday and called on tech companies to adopt the standards Meta agreed to in the agreement with a coalition of state attorneys general.
“Now every technology company should act. End addictive design features for children, give parents real control, make safety the default,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy said no company should profit from keeping kids compulsively engaged on screens.
Meta Vice President and Head of Global Safety Antigone Davis spoke at the symposium and said her company’s settlement was designed to set a standard that builds on protections for teen accounts.
“I believe TikTok and YouTube had to cancel at the last minute, but it’s really our hope that they will meet us at that industry standard, and it’s our hope that parents will actually join in the call for creating this industry standard,” Davis said.
National Telecommunications and Information Administration Senior Advisor for Strategy Matthew Plaster said many of the protections are hard to get to by design.
“A lot of a parent’s fight isn’t decided on rule makings. It’s decided in design meetings and the defaults and the settings buried three menus deep,” Plaster said.
Plaster said the NTIA would take a closer look at federal E-Rate funding.
The FCC’s E-Rate program utilizes the Universal Service Fund to provide discounts for telecommunications, internet access and internal connections to eligible schools and libraries.
E-rate funding is based on demand up to an annual cap of $4.456 billion.
Plaster said the biggest gap his agency identified is a staggering lack of parental involvement at the state and local level. He invited parents to join a virtual listening session on the evening of Tuesday, September 15.
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said 53% of U.S. children, or about 35 million kids, are covered by Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance program.
Oz said less screen time would make a big difference for seniors as well.
“Just 20 minutes of exercise or some activity a day, just to the Medicare population, would save us billions, we think $100 billion total for the nation,” Oz said.
