Social Media Companies Must Answer for the Youth Mental Health Crisis

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday morning, lynnswarriors.org. With us today is Lynn Shaw. Lynn Shaw, tell us, give us an update. How are we protecting the kids this week?

0:12 Speaker 2 Good morning, John. Well, I’m delivering a headline I don’t even want to deliver, but let me break it down for you. Just last week, Meta, which is Facebook and Instagram, and Snap. All the kids are on these two platforms.

0:24 Snap is Snapchat, where the messages disappear after a couple of seconds. Look, they went to court again. These are called bellwether trials. And two alleged victims came to trial to say they were harmed as kids because of the product design of these platforms. And right before trial, guess what?

0:46 No new news here. These two platforms settled out of court with the alleged victims. Billions in payouts, John, are going out as these trials. Now, there are thousands of more trials across the United States schedule. But just as I predicted not long ago, big tech has so much money and so much power, they’re just going to pay

1:05 everybody off. I wish, John, one of these trials, I wish somebody would say, you know what, we’re not going to take the money. We are going to go to trial to force them into accountability. But you know what?

1:18 Lawyers don’t want that usually, these long, withdrawn trials. Judges don’t even want that. The states don’t want that with all the money spent. But look, these are two of the most popular platforms, again, Meta and Snap. And you know what? This is just going to happen over and over again. So I don’t understand, look, why the American

1:36 public isn’t screaming for more accountability with these platforms. Now they’re saying also with these settlements, we’re going to make safety changes for the kids. John, I ask, why weren’t these safety changes from the beginning or after these platforms started?

1:51 Why are we hearing about this now? And all of this is secretive, by the way. Settlements are secretive. The safety changes are basically nothing. We know from the history of big tech platforms that most of the safety they put out are their glossy PR safety protocols. They don’t work.

2:07 So why should we believe them here? But every question, this should haunt every parent, grandparent, and lawmaker in America. If the products were sufficiently safe in the beginning, why are we now asking for changes now, all these years later?

2:20 And let’s be clear, a settlement is not a legal confession because companies settle litigation for many different reasons. But parents should be calling for more. You can’t put a price. This is the problem, John. You cannot put a price on a child’s mental health. Children have one childhood. But with financial settlement, usually money always wins. So no amount

2:43 of money can replace a child. Remember, it’s not just a child who’s affected.

2:47 Speaker 1 You’re right. With financial settlement, sometimes people say, let me take something now, then wait for the big bonus later.

2:55 Speaker 2 Let me ask you something, though, John. Do you think somebody should go to trial with these big tech companies and force them into accountability? What do you think about that? Because I think somebody’s got to do something.

3:06 Speaker 1 I think the problem is that they have too many, and they can wait for five years, and some people just want to settle and move on.

3:15 Speaker 2 But in the meantime, children are dying, and we know this. We know the mental health of our children, the effects on them. And remember, not just the child. It’s their entire family. We at The Warriors work with families. The siblings are affected. The parents are affected. Kids who are killing themselves due to sextortion, it ruins the families. They

3:32 can’t pick up the pieces. Marriages are breaking up over all of this. Kids are losing critical thinking and analysis skills. They’re doom-scrolling all the time. Now we’ve got the schools putting all this AI, being forced, by the way, AI into the classrooms. So you know what we need to do, John?

3:50 We need to, parents certainly do have responsibility. Everybody has to step up. We live in a new world. They’ve got to know what their kids are doing to the best of their ability. You’ve got to talk to your kids.

3:58 But we’ve got to have a Congress that will pass some legislation because we have to have major changes with big tech. And right now they’re not held accountable. The only business that I know of that any of us know of, there’s no regulation. So we’re asking, we’re asking everybody to call on, just as we did the full

4:15 page in the New York Post, you know, call on your Congress members. Okay, go to winswarriors.org. I have it listed there with the phone numbers. Urge them to pass the Kids Online Safety Act. We want child safety. And you know what? Every parent and grandparent listening today, remember one thing. I’m going to say it again. We cannot

4:33 get back the years of childhood. So stand up for your kids, talk to your kids, and take action now.

4:42 Speaker 1 Well, Lynn Shaw, we worry about our kids. We love our kids. And thank you for everything you do to try to keep them safer than... They were in the past, and we’ll catch up with you again real soon.

4:56 Speaker 2 Thank you, John. Let’s talk again soon.