The $11 Billion Reason Big Tech Won’t Protect Our Children

Now that the 119th Congress has come together, there is no doubt that Great technology The lobbying machine will return in full force to thwart renewed efforts to pass key laws aimed at protecting minors from harmful content and activities online. social media. The widely supported, bipartisan Children’s Online Safety Act nearly crossed the finish line again in December 2024. However, Big Tech thwarted its passage through an aggressively funded disinformation campaign designed to protect its financial interests.

Despite overwhelming bipartisan support from the Senate and the endorsement of hundreds of non-governmental organizations, survivor groups and even the tech billionaire and owner of Elon Musk in pushing for its passage, House leaders did not include KOSA in their year-end spending legislation. How did it happen?

The bill co-authored by Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), in short, would limit advertising targeted at children, disable addictive features, provide the ability to opt out of algorithmic recommendations, and enforce the highest privacy settings for accounts used by minors.

Big Tech’s financial motivation for opposing child online safety regulations is clear. The old adage “follow the money” screams the sad reality that multi-billion dollar tech companies have a financial interest in peddling exploitative disturbing content and deliberately creating algorithms to hook children.

2022 Research at Harvard found that six major social media platforms made $11 billion from U.S. users under 18. An internal e-mail revealed that Meta assigns a lifetime value of $270 per 13-year-old user. Moreover, Big Tech has spent approx 90 million dollars he opposed the adoption of KOSA for three years.

The human costs of delay are serious. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called the impact of social media on children’s mental health “the defining public health challenge of our time” and “a contributing factor to the mental health crisis among young people.” The latest statistics show this 95% of children aged 13-17 more than two thirds of children aged 11-17 use social media report Difficulty stopping using technology.

Children are at risk of exposure to harmful and dangerous content and materials online, including content relating to suicide and self-harm, hardcore pornography and other forms of exploitation such as sexual violence. While parents fight to protect their children, social media companies are prioritizing profits by aggressively lobbying against child protection legislation.

Real-life tragedies highlight what’s at stake. As part of the final December initiative seeking a House vote on KOSA, Blackburn hosted a Capitol Hill roundtable during which he shared the stories of parents whose children died too soon due to harm caused by online abuse. Mason BogardA 15-year-old girl died following a “choking challenge” found on social media in 2019. Gavin Guffey17, died by suicide in 2022 after being a victim of sexual harassment.

Unfortunately, the heartbreaking pleas of these families and countless others have been largely ignored by Big Tech despite repeated Senate hearings in which both Democratic and Republican senators questioned Big Tech CEOs about their failed policies and poor attempts to threaten child safety First. Quite simply, mental health issues resulting from social media trauma and addiction will continue to devastate children’s lives unless our elected officials join us in holding multi-billion dollar Big Tech giants accountable.

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Enough Is Enough joins affected families, nonprofits, technology advocacy groups, pediatricians, parents, and the Senate in calling for immediate House passage of the KOSA Act. Keeping children safe online cuts across partisan lines and has broad support at the federal and state levels. Every day without legislation like KOSA being passed is a day that children continue to suffer the harms of online exploitation.

EIE 2024 Presidential Pledge to Keep Children Safe Onlinesupported by more than 60 survivor organizations and leaders, asks President-elect Donald Trump to commit to prioritizing the prevention of child abuse online and pushing for policies that put children’s online safety first. This is a unifying issue where we must check our differences at the door for the sake of innocence, the safety and dignity of children, America’s future and hope.

Donna Rice Hughes is the CEO Enough. She is an author, speaker, media commentator and podcast host Internet Safety with Donna Rice Hughes.