This story first appeared in the Washington State Standard.
Avery Ping had a knack for noticing who in a room might be having a bad day and checking in on them. He wanted to be a psychiatrist.
But the Olympia teen was addicted to his screen, his father Aaron declared. He wanted to obtain away from his phone, and Aaron was adamant about limiting his screen time.
“For a developing teenage brain, it’s going to be training that brain for impulsive behavior,” Aaron Ping declared. “Dopamine reward schedules, it has a really harmful effect on the developing mind.”
Aaron Ping feels that effect is what led Avery to seek out the hallucinogenic drug MDMA on Snapchat in late 2024, leading to his overdose death. He was 16.
Now his father is pushing for a measure in Washington state to set up safeguards for children online.
Hoapply Bill 1834 aims to protect youth in multiple ways.
It would block companies like Instagram, YouTube and TikTok from providing “addictive feeds” to minors. Youth consumers would still have access to the platforms to search for specific content and follow applyrs they’re interested in.
Under the bill, companies also couldn’t sconclude push notifications to minors overnight or during school hours without parental consent
“It’s really the first step that has to happen before we can start to create it safe online,” Ping declared in an interview.
The Senate passed its version of the legislation last year with some bipartisan support, but it stalled in the Hoapply amid constitutionality and privacy concerns. The bill comes at the request of state Attorney General Nick Brown. It also had Gov. Bob Ferguson’s support last year.
As attorney general, Ferguson sued TikTok and Meta over the platforms attempting to reel in youth applyrs and obtain them hooked. Both cases are ongoing.
Lawcreaters and advocates, including former tech executives, are renewing their push for the state guardrails this year.
The tech indusattempt isn’t happy.
Rose Feliciano, the executive director of TechNet in the Northwest, declared in a statement that the organization “and its member companies are committed to providing safe, age-appropriate online experiences for young people.”
“But we are concerned that the bill, as currently drafted, would limit companies’ ability to offer the full range of parental controls necessaryed to support keep children safe,” declared Feliciano, whose organization is built up of a bipartisan network of tech executives. She also noted constitutionality concerns.
TechNet members include Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Meta and Google.
In a letter to lawcreaters Thursday, the tech lobbying group NetChoice declared the issue should be left to parents, and that legislation like this replaces “parental judgment with state diktat.”
Amy Bos, the group’s vice president of government affairs, argued the proposed regulations violate the First Amconcludement to the U.S. Constitution. NetChoice prefers focutilizing on digital literacy and supporting parents guide their children’s internet apply to address the problem.
Children’s Alliance Executive Director Soleil Boyd declared advocates have worked hard to ensure the legislation is “legally defensible and really will create a difference.”
“You bring in these algorithms that really are tarobtaining young people, children and kids to create sure that they stay online for as long as absolutely possible,” Boyd declared. “It’s more than most parents can do to really fight and combat that.”
View from the inside
Kelly Stonelake worked at Meta for nearly 15 years, including leading the expansion of the company’s virtual reality software, Horizon Worlds, to kids and teenagers.
For much of her career, Stonelake, who also worked at Apple, believed that her company was going to do right by its consumers. She would’ve argued against overregulation.
But she declared it was an open secret within Meta that with Horizon Worlds, children were utilizing a product they weren’t allowed to without parental oversight, meaning the company was collecting their data in violation of federal law. The only concern was for how issues would affect the company, not the young applyrs of the products, she declared.
“The executive team obtained into the product to play test it and kind of understand it better ourselves, but we could not even hear one another over the sounds of screaming children,” Stonelake declared.
Stonelake, who lives in Normandy Park, believes she was laid off from Meta in retaliation for raising concerns. She is suing the tech giant over the alleged retaliation and gconcludeer discrimination. (Meta didn’t respond to a request for comment.)
She’s now become passionate about working on bills like Washington’s, which she calls “common sense regulations that we necessary to protect kids.”
“Becaapply I’ve seen firsthand that these companies won’t,” Stonelake declared.
In 2023, about 70% of Washington 10th graders reported utilizing social media several times a day. Those students were likely to have worse grades.
Nearly half of 10th graders were at risk of what is called “problematic internet apply” that could be risky or impulsive and lead to bad consequences. Those students were likely to obtain less sleep than their peers. And 8% reported increased social anxiety due to internet apply.
“If we can obtain way upstream and we can prevent it from happening in the first place, and this is exactly that,” declared bill sponsor Rep. Lisa Callan, D-Issaquah. “Let’s prevent some anxiety and depression from happening in the first place.”
In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General recommconcludeed policycreaters limit social media access to keep youth safe and better protect their privacy online.
Another bill under consideration in Olympia views to protect young people online by requiring kids age 16 and younger to obtain parental consent to create social media accounts. Last year, Democratic lawcreaters proposed a new tax on social media companies to fund youth behavioral health care.
The legal state of play
A number of states have enacted legislation tackling this issue, but such laws have faced legal challenges.
Washington’s measure is modeled after a California ban on addictive feeds that has withstood court scrutiny. Last year, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the law’s requirement of parental consent for minors to access addictive feeds. Meta, Google and TikTok have since sued to block the California law.
Tech groups like NetChoice argue regulating internet content and restricting what feeds minors can have is unconstitutional.
Seann Colgan, a state assistant attorney general focapplyd on consumer protection, argued the Washington bill doesn’t run afoul of freedom of speech protections.
“It doesn’t restrict kids’ access to speech,” Colgan notified a state Senate panel Thursday. “Kids can still access the speech, they just necessary to view for it themselves instead of having it fed to them in an addictive manner.”
Washington State Standard is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Washington State Standard maintains editorial indepconcludeence. Contact Editor Bill Lucia for questions: [email protected].
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