(light music) - [Announcer] Funding for "The Hinckley Report" is provided in part by the Cleone Peterson Eccles Foundation Fund, Merit Medical, and by contributions to PBS Utah from viewers like you.

Thank you.

- Tonight on "The Hinckley Report."

As social media has become increasingly prevalent, our panel analyzes its impact on our lives.

What are state and federal leaders doing to address the negative impact on young people and what legal pushback are these efforts facing?

(dramatic music) (dramatic music) Good evening and welcome to "The Hinckley Report," I'm Jason Perry, director of the Hinckley Institute of Politics.

Covering the week, we have Aimee Winder Newton, senior Advisor to Governor Cox and Director of the Office of Families, Dr. Kristin Francis, a child and adolescent psychiatrist with the Huntsman Mental Health Institute.

And State Senator Todd Weiler, a Republican representing parts of Davis and Salt Lake Counties.

Thank you for being with us on a special episode of "The Hinckley Report."

We'd like to get into certain issues impacting the state of Utah, our citizens from politics to families and I wanna start talking about social media this evening.

There's a lot of legislation about it, a lot of talk about it in the federal and state level, and you all are connected to it in various ways, and so we appreciate your insights.

But Aimee, let's start with you.

Let's talk about social media generally.

We hear a lot about the harms.

We hear about it everywhere we go, we talk about it.

Is it real?

Talk about the realities of social media in our families and our homes.

- Well, since the invention of social media, we know youth worldwide are lonelier than ever before.

So this has been one of the top concerns for Governor Cox, and it's why we've focused so heavily on looking at legislation, on lawsuits and on campaigns to warn parents of the harms of social media for their kids.

- Dr. Francis, talk about sort of the numbers a bit, but as the people that you treat, the people that you see, talk about the harms that you are seeing.

- Yeah, so I'm inpatient child and adolescent psychiatrist.

So we're seeing, you know, kiddos come in that are really struggling with thoughts of death, you know, feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness, depression, anxiety and, you know, often they have a high element of screen dependence.

They're looking to social media for affirmation, validation.

They're looking for, you know, how to act, how to be in this world.

And it's just a really vulnerable time.

So these are developing kids, their brains aren't fully developed, you know, and we see that over time, it can make them increasingly depressed, anxious, and enhance those feelings of insecurity that are very normal in adolescence.

- What is it about it this that's causing those reactions?

- Yeah, so think, you know, there's a plethora of things, but definitely content in relation to a child's developing brain, so, you know, not everything is appropriate for one person versus the other.

And especially where the child is at their age, their maturity, any type of preexisting conditions they have.

Also, just the amount of time.

A lot of kids are on their screens, they're on social media, they're on YouTube, they're, you know, doing things on TikTok.

They're doing things on all different sites instead of spending time with their friends, their family.

They're not going to bed on time.

Those are the things that we really want parents to understand are gonna make a huge difference in your kids' life.

- Or they're going to bed on time and they're sitting there scrolling until 2:30 a.m. - Yeah.

Senator, I think it's interesting to talk about there's the nature of the social media, but you're someone that's in it.

- Yeah.

- You know, you're fairly prolific, in fact, in social media.

Talk about someone, you know, that's not just like a parent you're talking to about the precautions.

Some things that you see with your use of social media because it's not, you know, it can be used for, you know, good or bad, I suppose.

- Well, there's a lot of bullying on social media.

I get bullied as a politician, but, you know I'm an adult and so I think I worry most about the bullying that happens with these young teenagers who, you know, are still developing their self-confidence and trying to figure out where they fit in the world.

So that's my biggest concern, is the bullying of our youth.

And it's kind of behind the scenes so the parents don't know about it.

- One of the things that we worry about is some of the data we're seeing in Utah related to kids and their mental health and we know social media is a part of that.

For instance, 53% of Utah high school girls feel persistently sad or hopeless for at least two weeks or more.

18% of Utah youth last year considered completing suicide.

And we had about 38% of our kids is all who got a full eight hours of sleep on an average school night.

So those numbers are very concerning as we look at how do we help kids in their mental health?

And when you look at the years that social media became popular, and then what's happened since, you see like a hockey stick effect on these graphs of self-harm and mental health issues and all of these things that are factors that relate- - Emergency room admissions.

- Yes, exactly.

And not just even in Utah or even in the US, but worldwide, this is a problem for youth.

- Yeah, I think this conversation is particularly relevant to Utah with our number one cause of death for children being death by suicide.

And that's different.

Typically it's accidents.

And in Utah, accidents follow second.

And so we really have to be looking at what is it that is impacting children who are, you know, at a state where they're taking their lives.

- And the statistics from the CDC show that the social media is particularly harmful to teenage girls.

It has a negative impact on teenage boys, but for whatever reason, it seems to be amplified with teenage girls.

- Talk about the social harms campaign you've been working on in the governor's office.

- Yeah, so this is something the governor wanted to do to help educate parents.

We think a lot of times, parents don't know what to do or don't understand what the data shows and don't understand why this is so harmful for their kids, and so this is a campaign we started last fall.

We have TV ads, billboards, digital ads to help share some of these data points for parents.

We also have a website, socialharms.utah.gov, so there's a good place for resources.

There's a downloadable presentation that anyone can download that they can give to church groups, school groups, parent groups, have conversations with your family to kind of talk through some of these issues.

- Dr. Francis, will you talk about sort of the counsel that you give that I'm kind of curious, this intersection, you know, just, overall, but you have parental involvement, you have kids doing what kids do.

I mean, how do you bridge those two things?

- Yeah, so I mean, I love having resources that are readily available online, like the social harms campaign, because I can direct parents there.

Also, we at Huntsman have a lot of information out there about how to help your kids navigate the screen time and social media, you know, that they are going to be using.

And so as a family, we always recommend that you kind of come up with a screen time plan, so what is appropriate?

When is it appropriate?

You know, how much is appropriate?

And then kind of like, what are other things that your child should be doing?

You know, where should you be consuming the social media?

During what hours?

And then, you know, of course, we always encourage parents to model that because kids are looking to their parents.

They're still the number one influence on their kids' life.

I mean, that's a really powerful relationship.

So we say, "Hey, it starts with you."

- Well, - Jason, I don't think it's healthy for these kids to spend all of this time on social media.

It's kind of like a fake social life.

It's much more important for them to actually be with their friends and look people in the eyes and meet people and spend time with people rather than just scrolling through TikTok or Reels on their phones.

- I wanna get to some of the things the state is doing, but some of the major stats behind this too, I think that goes into the legislation.

64% of kids surveyed say they use social media.

They've been exposed to online hate.

That's what you were talking about too also.

60% of teen girls report being contacted on social media by a stranger in ways that made them feel uncomfortable.

50% say social media makes them feel worse about their body image.

Talk about this through the lens of a legislator, because you are looking at that and we've had several bills come out even this last session and the two before that.

- Well, one example of online hate, you know, we know that TikTok is tied to the, you know, Chinese government, the Communist Party.

And almost immediately after the October 7th attack in Israel, the TikTok was pushing propaganda to our youth that was either anti-Israel or pro Gaza, pro Hamas.

And they're using of our kids as political tools or political weapons.

And you know, a lot of people say, well, you know, this is a parenting decision, which I agree with, that I think we all agree with.

But, you know, alcohol for a 14-year-old is also a parental decision, but we require adults to show their ID at 7-Eleven or at the liquor store.

Tobacco and vaping is also a parental decision for teens.

It's also illegal.

And so I think the government can be a partner with the parents and give parents more tools and that's what these bills are designed to do is give parents more tools.

- Dr. Francis, one of these bills use some interesting language.

I thought this is Representative Jordan Teuscher.

This was House Bill 3/11 social media.

It prohibits social media companies from using, this is what the quote was, "a design or feature that causes a minor to become addicted to their service."

Talk about that through your lens too, this addictive nature, and it might be by design.

- Yeah, so I think it's always important to be thinking about the adolescent brain right now.

And during that stage of development, they're very, very susceptible to reward and instant gratification.

And so when those algorithms are there pushing things that's reinforcing, it can get very habit-forming for young people.

I mean, I feel the effects of the habit-forming myself.

And so if I'm even that much more desperate for kind of reinforcement, excitement, I mean, those are things we love about young people, but it can get almost habitual where you're just searching, looking.

And that's where we see that there is some evidence that brains of people who are using a lot of social media can look similar to brains that are maybe having a dependence on gambling or even in some situations, substance use.

- And I think that dopamine award is more dangerous for these kids when their brains are still developing.

I mean, I'm gonna get a dopamine effect from social media as an adult, but I'm a 56-year-old man and it's, I mean, my brain's kind of already formed and it's not gonna have the same, I think, impact on me as it would maybe a 14-year-old.

- Absolutely.

So what we try to say as a state is our best advice to parents is delay, delay, delay.

Don't give your kids a phone with social media and internet until they're adults, if you can, or ensure that they have the maturity that's needed.

Our US Surgeon General in the US speaks about this.

He talks about how important it is that 13 is way too young.

You should be waiting till 16, 17, 18 or until you know, your child becomes an adult to have them on social media.

And you know, as we look at how do we help wean kids off?

'Cause you know, easy to say when you've got kids that are maybe seven or eight to know from here on, like, really delay this.

But if your child has social media and you wanna start weaning them off, there's some things that you can do.

One is get a device like an iPad that's a family iPad or that's an adult's iPad and let them use it on that device.

Take it off of their phone so that it's not continually hitting 'em in the face, those notifications aren't there, but you can wean 'em off that way by putting it on a different device.

You can also set some more boundaries on, you know, no phones in bedrooms or bathrooms.

Increase your family time where you take your device and say, "Everybody's gonna check in their device.

We're gonna have family time to not have devices present."

And there's things like that that we can do to help our kids wean off social media.

But we think it's very important that they shouldn't be on at all.

I mean, the addictive nature of social media, it's too much for kids.

Their brains aren't fully developed, as senator mentioned.

- One mistake that parents make is they often hand their old phones down to their young kids when they get a new phone, especially in divorce situations 'cause they wanna stay in touch with them, with their other parents.

They'd be much better off getting something like a Gabb Watch where they could communicate with them, but they don't have full access to the internet and social media.

- Before we leave this one entirely, Dr. Francis, anything else from the Surgeon General?

'Cause it's interesting that warnings did come out.

- Yeah, I mean, I think the Surgeon General's report is wonderful, articulates some, you know, real significant areas that we need to be mindful of.

And I think anytime we're hearing, you know, don't give, delay, it can be really anxiety-provoking for parents because what if they already have, right?

Like, so how do you suddenly take something away from your child?

So we always wanna work with families to let them know there is a way to kind of backpedal slowly, have a discussion with your kid.

I mean, the Surgeon General outlines a very nice family plan recommendations that what to do.

You know, we're realists in this world.

I mean, people have smartphones and so how to help your kids.

- Let's talk about some more of the legislation, Senator Weiler, if you'll talk about a couple of these.

Senator Fillmore's had a kind of a change to a bill this session.

Talk about what's happened or what we're going to see going forward.

- So we passed a bill in 2023, and it was going to go into effect on March 1st, 2024.

So the first thing the legislature did this year was we delayed that implementation date by about six months.

And then near the end of the session, we passed a bill that is a lot more focused, as Aimee said, on addictive natures because we are being sued, the state's being sued.

And if this is just framed in a First Amendment freedom of speech context, the state's more likely to lose.

And there are freedom of speech implications here, but there's also this addictive nature and so the bills that we passed this year still give more tools to parents, but also focus on the addiction factor.

- Talk about that interplay there with the First Amendment 'cause people often talk about that when you start, you know, implementing regulations, verifications, et cetera.

They say this is a First Amendment issue.

- I think we'd all agree that a 14-year-old has a First Amendment right, but is it the same as a 24-year-old?

And so that's one thing that I think the courts are gonna have to grapple with.

But this is not just the state coming in and saying, "We don't want your kids to have a freedom of speech."

It's that we don't want your kids to develop suicidal ideations and other things like that.

So I do think it's the proper role of government to promote the general welfare of the people.

And what we've learned through the Surgeon's General report and others, is that this is harmful for many of our youth and so we're trying to help parents help their kids.

- Yeah.

In that category right there, Aimee.

One of these bills by Michael McCaul talks about a verification process.

This was Senate Bill 194, a verification process to create a safer experience, privacy settings that are loaded onto a phone that are mandatory search engine indexing.

Talk about a couple of those things, how it might be impacting.

- Yeah, so I mean, the great thing about the repeal and replace of the two social media bills from last year to this year is I think that we've got a great chance of these holding up in court.

But what it does is it requires age verification.

If you are a minor, you're going to have a different experience with social media.

You're not going to have the ability for strangers to contact you and message you, for instance.

And there's going to be other things in place to have it be a little bit safer and not have those addictive features like autoplay, continuous scroll, notifications, all of that kind of thing.

And so it also, in that bill in the McCall bill, it gives parents the ability to, you know, if the child gives them access, gives them the ability to have other tools to be able to manage that.

In the Teuscher bill, the interesting thing about the Teuscher bill this year, the House bill, is that it basically provides a private right of action with rebuttable presumption for parents.

So parents can sue social media companies and the social media companies have to prove that their social media platform is not harmful, which is really hard to do.

However, there's a carrot approach.

If social media companies will do certain things and employ those in their platforms for children, then they can overcome that rebuttable presumption.

And that includes, you know, time limits, again, the addictive features and things like that.

So these are great bills that will give tools to parents that will help protect children in a way that we need to help them.

I mean, at the end of the day, the parents are still gonna have to be involved and make these decisions on whether they're gonna allow their kids on, but these bills will greatly help reign in these social media companies and protect our kids.

- And that safe harbor that Aimee mentioned is actually an invitation to the social media companies to be better corporate citizens and to do better.

The other thing that the bills prohibit is these tech companies from mining data from our kids and selling our minor's data, which is happening right now.

- Well, on this rebuttal presumption right here, talk about that 'cause you have your legislative hat, but also your lawyer's hat on how you see that working in the state.

- Ultimately, I think the best thing, I mean, mean moving forward would be, and rather than the government coming in and mandating all these regulations would be for social medias to step up and say, "Yeah, we're going to do this ourselves because we recognize that our product can be harmful so we're gonna put these systems in place."

- Dr. Francis, one of the things I often talk to our students at the university and the political science world too, is about how social media tends to reward this confirmation bias, that we tend to find ourselves only associating with people we agree with.

Maybe talk about that for just a minute.

If that's real, if that's what we're seeing, maybe even what you're seeing.

- I mean, I think that's something that, you know, kids don't have the context to know that people are thinking differently, right?

So if they are looking at social media and they're picking certain websites, you know, on Instagram, maybe they're following certain influencers and other ones are gonna be suggested and they may have no other context to know that the world is so much bigger than that.

And so, you know, kids are not great at having experience or perspective.

And so those are things that parents are always helping to try to, you know, teach their kids and the social media platforms aren't trying to give you perspective, they're trying to kind of get you into this single track.

- Aimee, we had a author Arthur Brooks here this past week, and he was talking a little bit, you know, at various places here about, you know, sometimes what you see is like the culture of contempt kind of comes through this social media and that as soon as you start hating someone, someone's kind of owning your perspective once you start to get to that point.

He asserts a lot of this has to do with social media.

- Oh, I totally agree.

I mean, this is one reason that the governor has gone out with his Disagree Better initiative nationally, is that we've gotta do a better job of seeing all different perspectives, understanding we may disagree and that's okay, but to not have contempt, not hate each other.

And I do think social media does that.

I mean, really if you think about it, the social media companies, their ultimate goal is to keep you engaged and online as long as possible because you are the product.

You're the one that they are making money off of.

And so the longer they keep you engaged, the more money they're making through their advertisers.

And we know that fear and anger keep people online more.

They keep 'em engaged longer because they're feeling an emotion and it's really scary.

I think it's harming our society.

I'm worried about our country and I think how we treat each other is become very uncivil and it's not good.

- I think I felt that a bit just on an intuitive level when my children, I have an 11 and 13-year-old, but when they were younger, I would notice that if they wanted to play a fun game on my phone or something, that they would get these pop-up ads, right?

And they were definitely not appropriate for that age, and they were exposing them to things.

And I very quickly learned that I would just buy whatever age appropriate game to make sure that all of those ads stayed away because they would start asking me these questions and I would think, "Where did you hear that?"

And they would say, "Oh, it's from this," or, "It's from YouTube."

You know, as I was watching this, this came up and that was really surprising to me as a parent.

- You know, Arthur Brooks is our nation's leading academic on happiness.

And I got a chance to meet with him last week when he was here and he said, "If you want your kids to be happy, don't let 'em on social media and don't get 'em smartphones."

I think he said that he would, I mean, he would suggest, I think he was a little bit tongue in cheek, wait until they're 21.

But I mean, the point is, is that these social media programs are not making our kids happy, they're making them sad and sometimes suicidal.

- One of the things you mentioned a moment ago, Senator, was, apart from all these things we just talked about, that there are potentially national security issues associated with some of these platforms.

Talk about that as well because not only has it been addressed with our legislature a bit, it's also being addressed on the national level.

- Yeah, and it should be addressed.

And, you know, the state of Utah prohibited state employees from having TikTok on government-issued phones.

A lot of states have done that.

Congress is starting to engage.

I hope that the Senate passes the bill or a version of the bill that the house passed because TikTok I think is a threat to our children, but it's potentially a threat to our national security and, you know, TikTok and China, the Chinese version that they allow for their children, it helps you like with math problems and it helps with homework.

It's not all these ridiculous reels that our kids are watching on TikTok.

They recognize they would not allow their own kids in China to use the TikTok that they're promoting to our kids in the United States.

- Aimee, this is something also came from Governor Cox, you know, some comments he made, but also some requirements he put out through all state devices.

- Right, absolutely.

I mean, we are worried about TikTok and we know that there's harm there, not only for the mental health of kids and adults, but like, like Senator Weiler mentioned, our national security, so it's definitely something we're concerned about.

I'll tell you as a parent, my youngest is 20, but I actually will admit I paid him the other day to delete TikTok from his phone.

And I said, "You can keep the money as long as it's off your phone."

And if you ever decide to add it back, you gotta reimburse me.

But, you know, as a parent, now that he's not a child anymore and as an adult, I'm trying to do what I can to keep them off of that app.

I think it's incredibly harmful, - You know, and I think there's no doubt that there are aspects that are harmful.

And I do think there are some organizations that are taking really responsible approaches.

So Huntsman has an excellent, you know, channel on YouTube where we are on TikTok, where we're talking about mental health concerns, how to be, you know, aware.

It's content appropriate, it's age appropriate, and it's just a starting place for people.

And we're hoping that, you know, because they're already on there, that they're starting to kind of interface with us and that that might be a way that we can start reaching people and kind of meeting people where they're at.

- Dr. Francis, what do you do with your own kids?

- Yeah, so kind of funny.

Social media is a big, big deal in our family, specifically YouTube.

And my kids have a variety of interests.

My young son wants to watch, you know, farming videos and my other one just wants to watch people gaming and I'll never understand why, but I, you know, decided to pay them.

They're very motivated by money.

And so I pay them $10 a week to not be on any social media sites and every, you know, week they hold me accountable to make sure I've given that $10.

And it's nice because that way, if they do, you know, mess up, if they go to it and their friends are, you know, sending them things, they just don't get their $10.

- Yeah.

- You know, it's just a nice place to start.

- I wanna give you a couple stats as we start talking about some other things we can do.

Aimee, just as we surveyed this, the Hinckleys too with the Deseret News, Utahans, we asked what age Utahans felt like the children should be allowed on social media like Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and 36% of Utahans said not till 16 or 17.

So that's pretty an older age than we had thought it would be.

8% thought it was 13 or younger.

- Hmm, ah.

Well, I wonder, are these people that have teenagers that you surveyed or was that like it was- - So it was.

We asked them if they had children, yes.

- Yeah.

So we did a survey before we started our Social Harms Campaign and found 88% of our Utah parents believe social media is detrimental to their child's mental health.

And a high number, like the 70% number said that they think government needs to be involved to help regulate it, which is interesting.

- Yeah.

- In a state where, you know, normally we don't want government regulating, but in this realm, I think parents are just overwhelmed.

They don't know what else to do, and so it's been good that we've got these bills.

- A decade ago, as a parent, I felt like it was 12 and Instagram rates their app and says it's 12-year-old friendly.

Instagram is not 12-year-old friendly, Jason.

As an adult, I can tell you I've seen things on Instagram that none of us should want our 12-year-olds seeing.

But I'm hoping that parents today are wiser than I was and maybe waiting till their kids are 16 or 17.

- You know, and again, where do you start as a parent if you're hearing this and you're kind of panicking, like, oh man, I missed the boat.

You know, the Surgeon General's report brings up a nice study that showed if you just deactivated your social media platforms for three weeks, the results on your mood in terms of reduction of depression, reduction of anxiety, clinically significant disorders, it was 25 to almost 50% as productive or as helpful as if they had been in talk therapy for those three weeks.

- And doesn't it make you wonder why do some schools allow cell phones in the classroom, right?

I mean, that's a whole other issue.

- That's what we're gonna pick up, right?

- Right?

Yeah.

- It's got to be the last comment today.

So insightful.

Thank you.

And thank you for watching "The Hinckley Report."

This show is also available as a podcast on pbsutah.org/hinckleyreport or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thank you for being with us.

We'll see you next week.

- [Announcer] Funding for "The Hinckley Report" is provided in part by the Cleone Peterson Eccles Foundation Fund, Merit Medical, and by contributions to PBS Utah from viewers like you.

Thank you.

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