The Importance of Safety First Approaches

The ubiquity of social media and the addictive quality makes it a uniquely difficult public challenge to raise awareness about. 40% of kids 8 through 12 are on social media. We've allowed these platforms to just be out there with no real assessment of safety that is conducted by independent researchers, so there's no accountability. The limited rules that do exist, for example, many platforms have age 13 as a point at which a young person can start using these platforms. There's no evidence from a health perspective that that's appropriate. But also, these aren't even enforced. We need standards. We actually have to enforce them.