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Youth activists from across the country attended Wednesday’s hearing, donning T-shirts reading, “I’m worth more than $270.” The shirt is a reference to a lawsuit that 41 state attorneys general brought against Meta, claiming its products are addictive for teens. An unredacted version of that lawsuit includes an internal company email that said, “The lifetime value of a 13 y/o teen is roughly $270.”

Young advocates stood in the back of the hearing room with shirts that read “I’m worth more than $270” — part of the overall outsized crowd presence at this event. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) pointed to this group as she referenced the new set of internal Meta emails she and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) released. In the internal documents, Blackburn said, Meta executives described the lifetime value of teens on their services being roughy $270 each.

Profits should not be the primary concern when companies are faced with safety and privacy decisions, said Zamaan Qureshi, co-chair of Design It For Us, a youth-led coalition advocating for safer social media. “These companies have had opportunities to do this before they failed to do that. So independent regulation needs to step in.”

Accountable Tech and Design it for Us will hold a rally outside the Capitol following the hearing. Design it for Us is more focused on the harms it says are posed by Meta, Snap and TikTok. But it added in a statement, “That certainly doesn’t excuse Discord and X.”

“We understand that they are companies and they have to make profit. But when you’re faced with really important safety and privacy decisions, the revenue in the bottom line should not be the first factor that these companies are considering,” said Zamaan Qureshi, co-chair of Design It For Us, a youth-led coalition advocating for safer social media. “These companies have had opportunities to do this before they failed to do that. So independent regulation needs to step in.”

“We’ve been on this merry-go-round before, where we put forward and present new pieces of legislation, where we work with the lawmakers to make sure that it’s in the best possible place it can be, and then the lobbyists come in and try and kill it,” said Zamaan Qureshi, co-chair of youth online safety organization Design It For Us.

Qureshi is one of several young people trying to tackle the problem head on. He’s the cochair of Design It For Us, a coalition of organizations advocating for laws to make the internet and social media safer. The group has met with lawmakers including Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), and Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA).

“The lawsuits serve as a good place to see where a lot of this is happening,” said Zamaan Qureshi, co-chair of the youth-led coalition Design It For Us, a digital safety advocacy group. “We have all this new information and evidence … I think the tide has turned, or the temperature has changed.”

On January 31, 2024, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary will hold a hearing on online child sexual exploitation with CEOs from Meta, X, TikTok, Snap, and Discord. In advance of the hearing, Issue One and Tech Policy Press organized a virtual forum with a group of independent researchers, advocates, and representatives from child and online safety groups — most of them members of Issue One’s Council for Responsible Social Media (CRSM) — to discuss potential questions for lawmakers to pose to the CEOs. 

Design It for Us, which comprises activists from 18 to 26 years old, told Axios it worked with young people in the group and outside content creators to craft submissions. The group is calling on the government to require platforms to incorporate safety into their product designs by default, address “surveillance” advertising, make platforms deprioritize algorithms that addict users, and give users control of their personal information.