Design It For Us is endorsing a few bills on the federal level to improve these laws. You can view them here. One bill, the Kids Online Safety Act, is near the forefront of most minds. Some highlights include: An annual report on foreseeable risks of a given platform, disclosing specified information, not advertising certain products (such as nicotine) to young people, and allowing consumers and guardians to report certain harms.
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School boards sue social media giants
Four of Canada’s largest school boards sue social media giants for billions, alleging the apps are disrupting learning and rewiring how children think.
Editorial: Student calls for Minnesota kids code to hold Big Tech accountable
Matthew Allaire is a freshman at Macalester College, a Design It For Us coalition advocate and a member of the LOG OFF movement.
Big Tech won’t be able to track kids’ data in Maryland under new bill
In testimony for the bill, Arielle Geismar, a student at George Washington University who works with the national advocacy group Design It For Us, shared her personal experience of falling into a pit of social media posts about eating disorders that told her to starve herself. As she tried to understand what she was seeing, the platform served up more and more posts celebrating dangerous eating habits. She said the companies that design products to be as addicting as possible by using notifications to get children to open an app and endless scroll to keep them there are ruining young people’s lives.
He prosecuted child sex predators. Now, he’s going after Meta for allegedly enabling them
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez speaks during a rally organized by Accountable Tech and Design It For Us to hold tech and social media companies accountable for protecting teens on January 31, 2024 in Washington, DC.
New version of KOSA picks up speed
Youth-led coalition Design it for Us: “The latest improvements to the Kids Online Safety Act are welcome changes that would ensure this bill cannot be weaponized to restrict civil liberties – the result of the tireless advocacy of young people desperate for change to protect our generation online.”
Students’ anti-Zuckerberg, ‘I’m worth more than $270’ shirts stole tech’s Senate hearing
The advocates wearing the shirts were from Design it for Us and Young People’s Alliance. YPA’s Ava Smithing told SFGATE they wanted Zuckerberg to see the shirts and feel the impact of his platforms’ policies on young people’s mental health.
The result of all Washington-Silicon Valley tech showdowns? Nothing.
That was driven home by protesters at Wednesday’s hearing who wore T-shirts that read “I’m worth more than $270,” a reference to an internal Meta email disclosed in litigation brought by state attorneys general claiming that “the lifetime value of a [13-year-old] teen is roughly $270.” Demeaning though it sounds, this is merely standard business talk meaning that Meta assumes it will capture $270 in total for every teenage user over the course of their lives. But it shows exactly how the company views its customers.
These are the parents who stared down Mark Zuckerberg
Behind him, a group of advocates wore shirts that said “I’m worth more than $270” — a reference to a line from a Meta internal company email that said, “The lifetime value of a 13 y/o teen is roughly $270.”
Senators find tech CEOs’ responses hollow after four-hour hearing
One thing tech companies could do to show their goodwill, suggested Zamaan Qureshi, co-chair of youth-led coalition Design It For Us, is to “get their trade organizations to back off” from lobbying against the bills. Of the witnesses, only Snap broke ranks before the hearing from peers and its own trade group NetChoice by endorsing KOSA. During the hearing, X CEO Linda Yaccarino also offered her support for the bill. Microsoft, which was not summoned to the hearing, endorsed KOSA the day before.