The White House agreed with lawmakers that social media represents a danger to America’s youth following a fiery Senate Judiciary Committee hearing attended by five CEOs of prominent social media companies Wednesday.
“There is evidence that shows that these [social media] platforms have been devastating to our young people’s mental health,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said. “It has been part of a mental health crisis that we see here, and that’s why this president has taken action.”
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who founded the company while still a teenage Harvard student, was the subject of a dramatic Capitol Hill hearing earlier in the day.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) scolded Zuckerberg, “You have blood on your hands; you have a product that is killing people.”
Zuckerberg later stood and publicly apologized to the relatives of minors who killed themselves after online bullying, with some hearing attendees hoisting pictures of their loved ones in the air.
The Biden administration appears to agree with Graham.
“We believe this particular issue is a unity issue; it brings people together,” Jean-Pierre said. “Both Republicans and Democrats, they support this, and it has been a key platform of this president.”
“I’m not going to dive into everything that congressional members said — senators specifically said today,” she added. “But obviously we are — this country is experiencing a crisis among our young people, and we have to do something.”
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Jean-Pierre stopped short of backing any specific legislation, such as the Kids Online Safety Act, but said the administration believes “Congress has a place to act” in advancing legislation to strengthen online protections for children.
“We think they can do that,” she said. “To protect the health of kids, to protect safety online for children, they can act, and they can certainly do things to move forward on that.”
