Attorney General Camacho to TikTok and Snapchat: Give Parents More Control
March 31, 2022- Tamuning, Guam- Attorney General Leevin Taitano Camacho and a bipartisan coalition of 43 attorneys general wrote to TikTok and Snapchat this week, urging them to give parents the ability to monitor their children’s social media usage and protect their children from online threats using parental control apps.
“I’ll continue to work on ways to protect our kids from the negative impacts of social media on their mental and physical health. We can’t protect our kids on social media all the time, but parental controls can help identify and curb particularly dangerous online threats like bullying, harassment, and the potential for self-harm,” said Attorney General Camacho. “We are just asking TikTok and Snapchat to adopt measures that most other major social media platforms already have in place.”
Research increasingly demonstrates the negative impact that social media can have on the physical, emotional, and mental well-being of children and teenagers. These range from decreased self-esteem and greater body-image dissatisfaction to increased exposure to cyberbullying and sexual predation.
One app reported that in 2021, it analyzed more than 3.4 billion messages and found:
- 43.09% of tweens and 74.61% of teens were involved in a self-harm/suicidal situation
- 68.97% of tweens and 90.73% of teens encountered nudity or content of a sexual nature
- 75.35% of tweens and 93.31% of teens engaged in conversations surrounding drugs/alcohol
- 80.82% of tweens and 94.50% of teens expressed or experienced violent subject matter/thoughts
- 72.09% of tweens and 85.00% of teens experienced bullying as a bully, victim, or witness *
As the attorneys general note in their letter, “Parental control apps can alert parents or schools to messages and posts on your platforms that have the potential to be harmful and dangerous. Apps can also alert parents if their child manifests a desire for self-harm or suicide. On other platforms where these apps are allowed to operate appropriately, parents have received notifications of millions of instances of severe bullying and hundreds of thousands of self-harm situations, showing that these apps have the potential to save lives and prevent harm to our youth.”
Social media platforms already engage in some content moderation and operate under some community guidelines, but these are not always sufficient to protect children and teenagers who are particularly vulnerable to online threats, especially with regard to direct messaging. Parental control apps empower parents to be full partners with the platforms to maintain a safe space online for their children.
Attorneys General Lynn Fitch (MS) and Josh Stein (NC), led the initiative and was joined by the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.