The prime minister of Greece recently took to TikTok to explain why he is pushing for a social media ban for youth under the age of 15. He pointed out that the “addictive design of some apps” along with other harms takes away “some of your innocence and freedom.”
He’s not wrong.
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Teenagers and children are relentlessly exposed to addictive algorithms, predators, and viral social media challenges that can be fatal on social media and other digital platforms. A 2025 C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital national survey of top health concerns of parents found they are overwhelmingly most concerned about their children’s social media use (75%), screen time (75%), and internet safety (66%).
BIG TECH’S STICKY WEB HAS TRAPPED CHILDREN, ADDICTING AND EXPLOITING THEM
Recent legal verdicts confirm these harms. Meta and YouTube were found negligent for deliberately hooking children on social media and causing them harm. In New Mexico, a jury found that Meta enabled child sexual exploitation on its platforms and harmed children. In a lawsuit filed by the Massachusetts attorney general, a judge ruled that Meta will have to stand trial for allegedly hooking children on Instagram. There are more trials forthcoming and, God willing, more guilty verdicts.
Greece, Indonesia, Spain, the United Kingdom, France, Austria, and Denmark are all wisely considering legislation to restrict children and teenagers’ use of social media. In December 2025, Australia banned minors under the age of 16 from accessing social media, and more than 4.7 million minor accounts were deactivated by Meta, Snap, and others shortly after the law took effect. Greece’s prime minister called on the European Union to address online harms to youth, and the EU’s age verification app for online platforms is nearly ready to launch.
These countries are taking proactive steps to protect children from social media harms. Without this growing momentum and recognition from elected leaders worldwide, these harms to youth would remain ubiquitous. Big Tech has dug itself into a hole because they’ve failed to do the right thing by our children from the start. An historic reality is that the first social media platforms to take off in the United States and abroad, Facebook and Myspace, were developed for college-age students and older.
But where is the U.S.?
Tech lobbyists have been successful in watering down a series of child safety bills in the U.S. House to the point that they are completely ineffective. Perhaps that’s no surprise given that Meta, TikTok, X, Snap, and Discord combined spent $30 million on lobbying in 2023. The day after one recent legal verdict against Meta, CEO Mark Zuckerberg was conspicuously spotted in the halls of Congress.
As in previous sessions of Congress, the U.S. Senate continues to overwhelmingly support the Kids Online Safety Act, which includes the strongest “Duty of Care” for online platforms to prevent and mitigate harms to children and requires social media companies to provide safeguards and tools for minors and parents. Both the U.S. Senate judiciary and commerce committees are working in a bipartisan fashion to get key bills unanimously passed out of committee. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) must bring these bills for a vote. The House should take its cue from the Senate on this one. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) assured me in a recent meeting that any watered-down House version of KOSA will be dead on arrival in the Senate. Every moment we wait, more children’s lives are damaged.
State-level efforts around curbing online harms to children through artificial intelligence or chatbots have rightfully taken off. But state efforts are in jeopardy as federal efforts to preempt state AI bills gain momentum, despite immense pushback from survivor parents, child advocates, and tech experts. This is why Blackburn’s Trump America AI Act is critical because it is designed to protect the “4 Cs” (children, creators, conservatives, and communities) from exploitation, abuse, and censorship, and establishes a national AI framework per President Donald Trump’s executive order.
Our elected officials can and must act and should be incentivized to do so, as evidenced by the effectiveness of the 2025 bipartisan-supported federal Take it Down Act, which was recently used to convict a man for sharing abusive nonconsensual explicit images.
Big Tech is the new Big Tobacco. Big Tech is rightfully facing a reckoning for the harms it has perpetuated against children, but guilty verdicts, big fines, and bad press are not enough to hold it accountable to change its “addictive by design” business model to a “safer by design” model.
WE MUST PROTECT OUR CHILDREN FROM ONLINE EXPLOITATION
In 1994, Congress held hearings that began to turn the tide toward holding Big Tobacco accountable, and they must do the same to hold Big Tech accountable. The U.S. must follow the example of other countries in protecting children online. These laws work, Big Tech responds, and youth are safer. During this National Child Abuse Prevention Month and beyond, we must remember that we have a sacred duty to safeguard the innocence and dignity of children who continue to be abused through online platforms.
Big Tech needs to act to protect children and put safety over profits, and they won’t do so unless elected leaders force them to act and impose significant fines if they don’t.
Donna Rice Hughes, president and CEO of Enough Is Enough, is an internationally known internet safety expert, author, speaker, media commentator, producer and host of the Emmy-Award winning PBS internet safety series, and host of podcast Internet Safety with Donna Rice Hughes. Under her leadership, EIE created the Internet Safety 101 program with the U.S. Department of Justice.
