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“In some cases, seemingly benign animations can turn out to be sexual or violent in nature,” said Sebastian Mahal, co-chair of youth-led lobby coalition Design It For Us. “Young people don’t want to be targeted with this type of experience by YouTube’s algorithm. After a California jury found YouTube liable for failing to protect young people on its platform, one would think YouTube would finally take its responsibility to its young users seriously.”

Two seismic court decisions in the US have intervened where legislators have failed to defend social media users from exploitation, writes campaigner Zamaan Qureshi.

Nikki Iyer, co-chair of Design It For Us, also applauded the decision, calling it a “major milestone for every young person and family whose pain has been minimized by Big Tech.”

“Today’s decision ends an era of plausible deniability — Meta and YouTube knew their products were harming us, and now so does every legislature, parent and young person in America,” Iyer said.

Design It For Us, a youth-led group that advocates on social media design, led a letter signed by dozens of civil-society groups urging the committee not to forward the KIDS Act and its version of KOSA. The letter raised concerns about the lack of a duty of care, broad preemption of state laws and the bill’s knowledge standard.

A tech safety advocate told jurors Wednesday that Instagram’s teen safety features fail to shield young users from harmful content, as the State of New Mexico wrapped its case accusing Meta Platforms of misleading the public about the risks its platforms pose to children.

The concerns from Smithing and other advocates, like co-chair of the nonprofit Design it for Us Sebastian Mahal, suggest politicians pursuing age-gating in Europe and the United States may find themselves at odds with some of the groups they’ve counted as allies in past fights to rein in social media giants.

Mahal told Decoded in a statement that a blanket social media ban “restricts access instead of addressing the root problems through meaningful platform accountability.”

“We urge Governor Newsom to continue championing design-centered regulation that tackles the core business model of social media and AI products,” Mahal added.

Nikki Iyer, co-chair of Design It For Us, a policy advocacy coalition focused on online platforms, said her generation is not just the most digitally connected, but also “the loneliest generation.”