Just Released!
New Report: Big Tech is Putting Kids at Risk, Again
"These corporations—some of the wealthiest and most technologically advanced in the world—have deliberately chosen profit over protection. Their actions defy the law, disrespect survivors, and abandon the children these laws were designed to protect." – Children’s Advocacy Institute, August 2025
I feel bad when I use Instagram, and yet I can't stop.
Since 2000, traffickers have recruited 55% of sex trafficking victims online, usually through social media platforms.
There are drug sellers on every major social media platform. As long as your child is on one of those platforms, they’re going to have the potential to be exposed to drug sellers.
SUMMARY OF THE ISSUE AND CAI’S NATIONAL LEADERSHIP
With just eight full-time staff, in the face of opposition from the world’s wealthiest corporations, CAI has drafted and secured the enactment of more first-in-the-nation laws addressing online risks to children than any other organization.
Social Media
Social media platforms have caused one of the biggest health crises for children in our nation’s history, aside from biological epidemics. These platforms have knowingly contributed to serious issues like suicide, depression, child sexual exploitation, the purchase of drugs laced with deadly fentanyl, eating disorders like anorexia, and addiction to the platforms themselves. Mark Zuckerberg’s famous statement about Big Tech’s goal to “move fast and break things” has resulted in an industry that harms children and tears apart families, all for profit.
The root of the problem lies in how social media makes money. Similar to TV, where more viewers mean higher ad revenue, social media platforms profit by keeping people glued to their screens so they can show more ads. But unlike TV, social media uses advanced tools like artificial intelligence, powerful computers, and detailed knowledge of our online behavior to develop techniques that can harm young minds. For example, research shows that young people are especially drawn to content that makes them feel anxious about their social status.
This means the way social media platforms earn money directly conflicts with the health and well-being of children.
Purchase of Unlawful Products, Invasion of Privacy, Parental Consent Avoidance
It isn’t just social media. Online shopping platforms too often permit children to buy products that would be unlawful to sell to minors in-person, circumvent parent consent, and invade privacy.
CAI’S UNMATCHED RECORD OF LEADERSHIP
No other organization has drafted and secured the enactment of more first-in-the-nation laws addressing online risks to children than CAI.
Co-sponsored with Common Sense Media and the California District Attorneys Association, AB 1831, the Preventing AI-Enabled Child Exploitation Act, ensures that obscene Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) created using artificial intelligence is criminally unlawful to produce, to possess, and to distribute.
Co-sponsored with Jewish Children and Family Services and Common Sense Media, this overhaul of the previously feckless California Cyberbullying Act requires is the first law in the nation requiring social media platforms to create a mechanism to report cyberbullying and requiring the platform to respond to reports on set timetables and either remove the content in question or explain why it is aligned with their platform’s policies. It also allows parents and school administrators who report cyberbullying to bring a civil action to enforce the law.
In 2024, the Governor signed SB 976 (Skinner), sponsored by Attorney General Rob Bonta, addressing social media addiction. CAI supported the measure which, like CAI’s first legislative effort AB 2408 (Cunningham and Wicks) from 2022, rightly targets platforms using neuroscience-based techniques to profit from making addicts of children. Utah, too, passed a law addressing addiction inspired by CAI’s AB 2408, (Utah Code sections 78B-3-1101, et seq.), Utah Harm to Minors by Algorithmically Curated Social Media Service.
On January 1, 2025, AB 1394 (Wicks) goes into effect. This first-in-the-nation bill will, like SB 1504, require platforms to establish a mechanism for reporting CSAM and child sex trafficking, requiring the removal of such content. More importantly, it clarifies that such platforms can be held civilly liable for facilitating sex trafficking, exposing the platforms to millions of dollars per child if they do so. To read more about the law and to see the truly morally repulsive way that Instagram used to address such content, read CAI's letter to Governor Newsom.
In 2018, CAI secured the enactment of the first law in the nation requiring platforms to engage in age verification of items that are unlawful to sell to minors.
CAI's PUBLIC EDUCATION EFFORTS
How are children harmed by Social Media?
American children and teens are in crisis. Over the past decade, rates of suicide, depression, and hospitalizations from self-harm have soared, especially among teen girls. It is undeniable that this spike coincides with the skyrocketing use of social media by teens.
Teen Mental Health and Addiction
Research shows that social media platforms' algorithms direct specific content to their users, including content that makes them feel bad about themselves and promotes extremely dangerous and harmful practices. In addition, these platforms hire neuroscientists to develop features to keep users on their platforms ("like" buttons, beauty filters, etc.). The more time users spend on a platform, the more ad revenue the platform can generate - revenue that comes at the expense of children’s well-being. Because their brains are still developing, children are particularly vulnerable to becoming addicted to these platforms. This addiction increases the time spent away from positive activities and healthy relationships; factors that can help children avoid mental health challenges.
As demonstrated in the images below, indicators of poor mental health among U.S. girls and young women, 2001–2018 (note, before COVID) showed increases in depression, self-harm, and suicide among U.S. adolescents. This never-before-seen spike in suicides among teen girls occurred during this exact same time frame as Instagram's rise to one billion users.
Social Media Platforms Facilitate Unlawful Sexual Exploitation of Children
Social media platforms facilitate the unlawful sexual exploitation of children – and they know it. Data shows that one-quarter of youth aged 9-17 report having had an online sexually explicit interaction with someone they believe to be an adult. The average age of child sex trafficking victims is 13-14. An astonishing 65% of underage sex trafficking victims recruited online in active criminal trafficking cases in 2020 were recruited through Facebook, while 14% were recruited through Instagram, and 8% through Snapchat. An internal Facebook report in 2020 found that its platform “enables all three stages of the human exploitation lifecycle (recruitment, facilitation, exploitation) via complex real world networks.”
Facilitating the Sale and Distribution of Dangerous Items
Research demonstrates that social media companies’ algorithms direct their users to content that promotes extremely dangerous and harmful practices. Children are being targeted with content that facilitates the sale of deadly fentanyl and promotes the sale of illegal firearms, including ghost guns that can’t be traced.
According to The New York Times, teenagers and young adults are turning to Snapchat, TikTok, and other social media apps to find Percocet, Xanax and other pills. There are drug sellers on every major social media platform. Social media sites have become “ the superhighway of drugs.”