New bill would add addiction warning on social media

OHIO — A new bill in Ohio is pushing to add an addiction warning label to social media platforms.

The push comes just weeks after a California jury ordered Google and Meta to pay a woman a combined $6 million saying the companies were responsible for her addiction to social media.

Now state lawmakers here are advocating for reform as, for many people, social media consumes their lives.

Lis Regula is a father of a 20-year-old daughter.

“She got social media courtesy of her other parent when she was about 12, and it was not my choice but went along with it and rolled with it,” Regula said. “My fear are the ways in which social media platforms monetize people’s data and their activity online. What impact that would have on her growing up.”

It's a fear that Libby Steele, a licensed professional clinical counselor from Columbus, said is valid.

“When somebody with a developing brain has access to a system with these short-form videos, so things like TikTok and reels and YouTube shorts, it’s resetting their brain,” Steele said.

Short form videos are making people’s attention span shorter Steele said, and there’s harm not only for teenagers but for adults as well.

“It’s creating a comparison trap,” Steele said. “It’s creating feelings of being less than. It’s sort of creating these unrealistic standards about how you know your body should look, how you should think or feel.”

State Rep. Christine Cockley, D-Columbus, is cosponsoring a bipartisan bill that would require certain social media platforms to add addictive warning labels within their app.

This is different from social media Parental Notification Act that a Franklin County judge struck down in 2023.

“This one is more similar and timely with the recent court decision that came out just this year, where Meta and YouTube were found negligent at a social media addiction trial,” Cockley said. “This is more about the product, not the content and the speech.”

Some social media platforms are on board.

Ben Moore runs BeReal, a social network that allows people around the world to share moments in real time.

“We need to go and address the problem, which is the architecture, the algorithm, the platform, like BeReal doesn’t have any algorithm, meaning that there’s no content that is being served by strangers,” Moore said. “There’s no AI generated content where you wonder, what you see is it real or not.”

Spectrum News reached out to both Meta and Google for a comment. Meta says they won’t comment on the legislation. They have tools and resources online to support teenagers and their families. Google has not yet responded.

Regula said this legislation is long overdue and creating laws to protect future generations is important.

“We want a thriving community,” Regula said. “And we want to do better than our parents did and for our community to do better today than it did yesterday.”