Mayor Eric Adams says it’s a public health hazard. Gov. Kathy Hochul calls it “poison.” Attorney General Letitia James claims it’s a “crisis.”
In recent weeks, some of New York’s top elected officials have used their bully pulpits to take aim against what, for them, has become a common enemy: Social media and its effect on kids.
“We cannot stand by and let big tech monetize our children’s privacy and jeopardize their mental health,” Adams said in his State of the City address last week.
Adams, Hochul and James — whose offices all maintain active and large social-media presences of their own — are part of a growing national trend of state- and city-level officials pushing for laws that target how major online platforms like TikTok, Instagram and Facebook interact with children.
Lawmakers across 35 states and Puerto Rico introduced legislation last year that was spurred by concern over social media’s effect on youth mental health, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Of those, 12 states adopted measures with varying degrees of action, including New Jersey, which launched a commission to study the issue.
Now, New York is on the verge of joining them, with Hochul and James pushing a pair of measures that would restrict social media platforms from collecting data from minors and exposing them to addictive algorithms. And in New York City, Adams’ administration issued a public health advisory last week warning parents not to give their kids access to smartphones or other devices that can access social media until at least age 14.
Adams has gone as far as to compare the harms of social media to the harms of tobacco, with his office publishing a graphic showing a cartoonish pack of cigarettes, each one labeled with a different online platform.
The mayor’s office blasted out the graphic across its social media accounts, naturally.
Hochul, meanwhile, has pointed to the mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket in 2022, where an…
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