By Clare Duffy, Brian Fung and Aditi Sangal, CNN
From CNN's Brian Fung
The Judiciary chairman, Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, said social media companies not only “have contributed to this crisis, they are responsible.”
Durbin also criticized the companies for “conveniently” rolling out new announcements on child safety only in the week ahead of the hearing.
The lawmakers and tech executives are now in their seats as the Senate Judiciary Committee is set to grill the chief executives of five big tech companies, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, about potential harms from their products on teens.
As the CEOs entered the room and took their seats, some of the parents — still standing and holding pictures of their loved ones — hissed at the executives.
The hearing has begun with a video of people telling their stories on how they or their loved ones were harmed on social media.
From CNN's Clare Duffy
In the weeks before Wednesday's hearing, Meta rolled out a series of new youth safety policies and features for Facebook and Instagram. They join Meta's existing slate of more than 30 well-being and parental oversight tools aimed at protecting young users.
Here are some of the safety updates the company has launched so far this year:
From CNN's Brian Fung
The room has gone silent as dozens of parents stood in their seats, holding up pictures of loved ones allegedly harmed by social media. No witnesses have entered yet though lawmakers are beginning to filter in, including Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.
From CNN's Clare Duffy
Snapchat earlier this month said it would give parents the option to block their teens from interacting with the app’s “My AI” chatbot following some questions about the tool’s safety for young people.
The change will mean that if parents opt to turn off the tool, teens can message My AI but the chatbot will respond only with a note that it has been disabled.
The announcement was part of broader set of additions to Snapchat’s parental oversight tool Family Center.
The platform will also now offer parents visibility into their teens’ safety and privacy settings in the Family Center. A parent can see who their child shares their Stories posts with, who is able to contact their child on the app and whether their child is sharing their location with friends on the app’s live “Snap Map” feature.
Read more here.
From CNN's Clare Duffy
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to urge lawmakers to implement legislation that would make app store operators — rather than social media platforms — responsible for verifying the ages of users, according to prepared testimony released ahead of Wednesday's hearing.
Parents of teens under 16 should have the final say on what apps are appropriate for their children, and this approach would leverage the parental approval system for purchases that app stores already provide today, so there’d be no need for parents and teens to share a government ID or other personal information with every one of the thousands of apps out there," Zuckerberg's prepared testimony states.
Zuckerberg is also set to promote the company's existing youth safety measures — including "take a break" reminders that urge teens to stop scrolling on Instagram and letting parents oversee who their child follows.
Those efforts have faced criticism for placing too much responsibility in the hands of parents and teens themselves to ensure they have a safe experience on the company's platforms.
Zuckerberg is also expected to note that "the existing body of scientific work has not shown a causal link between using social media and young people having worse mental health outcomes," according to his prepared testimony.
From CNN's Brian Fung
Senior Meta executives tried to sound the alarm internally about Instagram and Facebook’s handling of kid safety, warning CEO Mark Zuckerberg in 2021 “we are not on track” and that the company faces “increased regulatory risk” due to underinvestment in user safety, according to new internal documents published Wednesday by two US senators.
The newly released communications provide some of the most specific and direct evidence to date that Zuckerberg may have ignored or rebuffed efforts by senior company officials, including then-COO Sheryl Sandberg and President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg, to invest more heavily in the mental health of Meta’s users.
In one August 2021 email, Clegg told Zuckerberg a growing number of policymakers worldwide have “publicly and privately” expressed concerns about Facebook and Instagram’s possible effects on teen mental health.
US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy directly raised the issue with Clegg, he reported to Zuckerberg, while congressional Republicans were increasingly making kids and social media a “centerpiece of their tech agenda” in an electoral strategy to “win back ‘suburban moms,’” Clegg’s email said.
The growing scrutiny could follow Meta as it attempts a high-stakes pivot into virtual reality, Clegg warned.
Two years later, however, Zuckerberg has instead laid off thousands of employees, including staff dedicated to user well-being. And his company is confronting a rising tide of litigation and regulation by governments around the world.
From CNN's Zenebou Sylla, Melissa Alonso and Amanda Jackson,
A gruesome killing is under investigation after a man posted a social media video showing what he claimed was his father’s decapitated head and ranting about the Biden administration and the border crisis while declaring himself the new acting president of the United States under martial law.
The video circulated for hours on YouTube – garnering more than 5,000 views – before it was taken down. Justin Mohn, 32, now is being held without bond, and is charged with murder, abuse of a corpse and other charges, Pennsylvania court documents show.
While Sundar Pichai, the CEO of YouTube parent Alphabet, will not be among the tech CEOs on Capitol Hill today, the video is almost certain to come up as an extreme example of the potential harms of social media to young people and to others.
From CNN's Clare Duffy
Here are the names of the tech leaders expected to appear in today's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing:
