One day, we will look back at social media companies like ByteDance (Tiktok) and Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and compare them to tobacco companies like Philip Morris (Marlboro) and R.J. Reynolds (Camel). For a time, Big Tobacco enjoyed immense profits and popularity. But eventually, Big Tobacco’s culpability in causing immense physical harm to Americans — and in trying to obscure the science regarding that harm — became known. They were eventually held accountable for their deceptive advertising to children using “Joe Camel.” We are living at a moment when we are just learning of the social and psychological harms of social media, and of Big Tech’s efforts to obscure those harms from the public. //

Morell and her fellow policy experts list five actions that states can take now while they wait for Congress to enact more rigorous requirements for online companies. They include: mandating robust age-verification measures for social media platforms by requiring a driver’s license, credit card numbers, or another form of identification to create an account; requiring parental consent for minors under 18 to open a social media account; mandating full parental access to minors’ social media accounts; requiring social media companies to shut down access to their platforms for all 13- to 17-year-olds’ accounts during bedtime hours (generally 10:30 p.m. – 6:30 a.m.); and including a private cause of action to enable parents to bring lawsuits on behalf of their children against tech companies for any violation of the law.

Morell foresees internet companies’ dislike of “patchwork state laws” as working to the benefit of parents and children, since altering how they do business in one state would likely spur them to make their policies identical across the country.

Morell adds that the private cause of action clause is key, because, “If individual parents are empowered to bring a private lawsuit against these tech companies for violating the law, that could be very costly to their business, and they would take that seriously. [Private cause of action suits] are one of the most effective means of enforcing laws.”