Mark Zuckerberg’s Billions vs Surge In Teenage Girls Suicides
Talk is cheap. Doing the right thing costs money.
“Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologised to families who say their children had been harmed by social media… “I’m sorry for everything you’ve all gone through, it’s terrible. No-one should have to go through the things that your families have suffered.” – BBC
The same day, “Zuckerberg’s fortune surged by $28B. He is the world’s fourth-richest person, with a net worth of $170 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.” – NY Post
We mapped the surge in teenage suicides against Facebook’s share price.
Check the facts for yourself
We used data on suicide rates among young people from Our World In Data.
Additional information is from this report is developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Division of Adolescent and School Health (DASH) to highlight the national Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) data.
“In 2021, 16% of high school students were electronically bullied, including through texting, Instagram, Facebook, or other social media, during the past year. Female students were more likely than male students to be electronically bullied. American Indian or Alaska Native and White students were more likely than students from most other racial and ethnic groups to be electronically bullied. LGBQ+ students and students who had any same-sex partners were more likely than their peers to be electronically bullied.” – Page 52
Mark Zuckerberg’s toxic platform
“Facebook has dominated the social-media world for nearly a decade and a half. Its flagship product supplanted earlier platforms and quickly became ubiquitous in schools and American life more broadly. When it bought its emerging rival Instagram in 2012, Facebook didn’t take a healthy platform and turn it toxic. Mark Zuckerberg’s company actually made few major changes in its first years of owning the photo-sharing app, whose users have always skewed younger and more female. The toxicity comes from the very nature of a platform that girls use to post photographs of themselves and await the public judgments of others.“ – The Atlantic
Meta Share Price
“Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune surged by more than $28 million after the Meta CEO profited off his company’s record-breaking stock surge. As of Monday, Zuckerberg is the world’s fourth-richest person, with a net worth of $170 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.“ – NY Post
Meta Platforms – 12 Year Stock Split History | META – data from Macro Trends
Children are just pawns in this game to make money
“It lacked any heart
… “I think he could have done better in his apology to us.”
When asked what was going through her mind as she listened to the tech CEOs defend themselves, Norring said that it was “very frustrating to sit and listen to them. I just feel like for them, our children are just casualties, pawns, in this game to make money,” said Bridgette Norring
a mother whose son died from an accidental fentanyl overdose.
Fed up with tech CEO apologies
“An apology by Mark Zuckerberg is not enough… We need action. We need laws. We need protections …. we’re fed up with apologies.“ Their CEOs showed up today with even more excuses. It was outrageous,” said Senator Ed Markey (D-MA).
Markey who pioneered the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, a 1998 law that bars the nonconsensual collection of data of kids under age 13, urged passing an update to the law extending those protections to teens. – CNN
TakeAway: Hold billionaire tech CEOs accountable for the harm they cause. Vote for President Biden and democrats to protect your children.
Deepak
DemLabs
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Tell your Senators: We need the Kids Online Safety Act now
Democracy depends on common truths. Social media giants are eroding our consensus reality and pushing democracy to the brink. Accountable Tech is fighting back by urging social media companies to serve the public good by strengthening the integrity of their platforms and our democracy. Support Accountable Tech.
The evidence that social media companies like Meta are deliberately addicting and exploiting our kids – and feeding them a constant stream of harmful content that frequently leads to mental health problems, and even suicide – just keeps growing. While state-level legislation such as California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code are good pieces of the solution, it’s clear that we need national legislation to keep Big Tech in check. The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) from Senators Blumenthal and Blackburn is our best shot – in the current political climate – at addressing this urgent and widespread problem anytime soon. If law, KOSA would:
- Require platforms to provide users with options to turn off engagement-based algorithms and disable addictive product features.
- Require platforms to give users options to restrict messages from other users and make their platforms private, in order to prevent and mitigate cyber bullying.
- Require that platforms address the ways in which their recommendation systems promote drug usage and other illegal substances to kids and teens.
- Require clear and easy to understand privacy policies for minors, notice about any heightened risk from personalized recommendations and information about the safeguards offered.
- Establish easy-to-use reporting mechanisms for minors, parents and schools to report to covered platforms and requires a timely response from the companies.
So please click “start writing” at right to send letters to your Senators and ask them to support the Kids Online Safety Act and urge Senate Majority Leader Schumer to bring this bill to a vote. Thank you for taking action to protect our kids today!
Accountable Tech: Start Writing
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Reposted from Democracy Labs with permission.
