President Biden will call in his Tuesday night address for limits on potentially harmful interactions between children and social media platforms.
He will ask Congress to ban targeted ads aimed at children on social media sites, the Biden administration said. The president will also say that the platforms “should be required to prioritize and ensure” the safety and health of young people, including when they make design choices for their product, according to a fact sheet. And he will call for more research into how social media affects mental health and new scrutiny of the algorithms that often determine what someone sees online.
The plans, part of a larger package of mental health measures that Mr. Biden will announce during the State of the Union, reflect a backlash against the largest technology companies and their ubiquitous products. Parents, activists and policymakers have said that social media services and streaming platforms like YouTube are designed to get their users hooked by feeding them content the sites know will hold their attention. In turn, the critics say that young people can be fed increasingly extreme content or posts that diminish their self-worth.
One of the guests joining the first lady, Jill Biden, for the speech will be Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee who leaked documents that, among other things, showed that some teenagers said Instagram made them feel worse about themselves. Ms. Haugen spoke to Congress last year about her concerns.
But the United States lags behind many of its allies in taking concrete steps to shield children from extreme posts, addicting content and data collection online. Last year, new guidelines took effect in the United Kingdom that push platforms to limit the data they gather on young people, prompting several companies to implement more child safety features. Australia has just handed one of its regulators expanded powers for protecting children and adults online. Both the United Kingdom and the European Union are also considering additional legislation to target what they say is harmful content on the internet.
