Bipartisan Bill Introduced to Address Social Media Addiction

Image Source: Visual China

BEIJING, February 11 (TMTPOST) — U.S. Demoratic Senator Amy Klobuchar and Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis have proposed a bill that aims to solve Internet users’ addiction to social media platform such as Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen disclosed tens of thousands of Facebook"s internal documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission and The Wall Street Journal in 2021, which reveal the potential harm Instagram could do to teenagers. Haugen sparked massive criticism over social media’s impact on minors. Social media platforms such as Facebook were also heavily criticized for helping spread fake news about Covid-19 and vaccines.

The bill would direct the National Science Foundation and the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to study “content neutral” ways to add friction to content-sharing online and addiction to social media. Measures to intervene in cases of addiction will also be studied under the bill.

“For too long, tech companies have said ‘Trust us, we’ve got this,’” Klobuchar said in a statement on Thursday. “But we know that social media platforms have repeatedly put profits over people, with algorithms pushing dangerous content that hooks users and spreads misinformation.”

The democrats have been seeking ways to terminate fake news on the Internet for the past few years, while republicans have criticized the democrats for creating threats to freedom of speech.

Haugen’s whistleblowing had put the Democrats and Republicans at the same table. The two parties then started to seek bipartisan solutions to control social media platforms and solve issues such as social media addiction and fake news. The support from Republican senator Lummis marks an important progress for the bipartisan bill.

Twitter has not responded to media’s request for comment on the bill.

Facebook has declined to comment but pointed out that the company will install new tools on Instagram that will remind users to take a break from the screen if they have used the app for a long time.

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