Sullivan, Senate advance Legislation to protect youth health and safety online

Senator Dan Sullivan, a member of the Senate Commerce Committee, voted on July 30, 2024, to pass the ‘Kids Online Safety and Protection Act,’ legislation to protect the health, wellbeing, and privacy of children online. This bill combines provisions from the ‘Kids Online Safety Act,’ of which Senator Sullivan was an original cosponsor, and the ‘Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act’ to combat harmful online content targeted towards minors and to encourage parent and guardian involvement in their children’s online activities.

Senator Sullivan has been a longtime advocate for accountability from social media platforms in regard to youth mental health, especially as suicide rates among adolescents have skyrocketed over the last decade.

“In my 2023 speech to the Alaska legislature, I told Alaska’s elected leaders that this would be a big battle, but that I’d fight to shake the vise grip social media has on our children,” Senator Sullivan said.

He said that the legislation is a necessary first step in holding Big Tech companies accountable for the content they push towards kids, while giving parents the tools to be more involved in their kids’ online activity, but cautioned that there is more work to do.

“As a parent, it is impossible not to hear stories about young people seemingly addicted to their phones and social media accounts. Even those who aren’t parents know something is horribly amiss with a whole generation who have been so addicted by Big Tech that they can’t seem to look up from their phones. More troubling, suicide rates among adolescents have increased dramatically in the last decade with the rise of social media. We must do more to protect our children. We can have the strongest economy, the best quality of life, but none of that means anything if our kids are depressed and are considering ending their lives because of what they’re consuming online.”

The legislation is among the latest in Senator Sullivan’s work addressing the physical and mental health of youth. In May 2024, he launched the “One Pill Can Kill – Alaska” campaign to combat the increase in fentanyl-related deaths in Alaska and across the country.

Last July, Senator Sullivan hosted U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy in Anchorage for a series of town hall-style roundtables to discuss the mental health crisis among youth, how social media impacts the crisis, and what can be done to combat it. That same month, he introduced the ‘Advancing Digital Support (ADS) for Mental Health Services Act,’ which would require reporting on targeted advertising and encourage online advertisers to dedicate some of their ads to mental health PSAs.

He has also worked with Senator Lisa Murkowski to introduce ‘Bruce’s Law’ to bolster federal prevention and education efforts surrounding fentanyl, a deadly synthetic opioid that is increasingly being incorporated into illicit street drugs. The measure was named after an Alaskan, Robert “Bruce” Snodgrass, who tragically passed away in 2021 at the age of 22 from fentanyl poisoning.