For teenagers like Nidhi Das, social media became a cherished lifeline to friends during the pandemic’s early days.

But as regular life resumed, Das didn’t like how tethered she felt to it. Social media became her go-to boredom buster, and even the misinformation that infects many platforms kept her swiping.

“The algorithm, it curates to what you like. And people would make up little controversies, so that might encourage you, like ‘oh, let me look into that.’ Even if it’s not true, I still want to know like: ‘Oh, where did that stem from?’” said Das, 17, a high school senior from Lawrenceville. “The addicting thing is that there’s always something endlessly there, so you keep scrolling.”

That’s why several New Jersey lawmakers recently introduced  to crack down on social media platforms that use habit-forming features that entice underage users to develop social media addictions. Violators would face up to $250,000 in fines unless they remove the addictive features from their products. The bill applies only to companies that earned more than $100 million in gross revenue the preceding year and video game platforms.

Assemblyman Herb Conaway Jr. (D-Burlington) said the congressional testimony of Facebook whistleblower  inspired him to introduce the bill in January, as well as several other bills intended to protect children from social media. Haughen testified that Facebook algorithms deliberately suck children in and can be especially toxic to teen girls.

“Facebook really is making a commodity out of the human mind,” Conaway said. “Unfortunately, far too many people in the business of selling things are perfectly willing to engage in behavior and practices that cause a lot of harm if it means they’re going to make a lot of money. And that’s where government has to step in and say that we have a responsibility to protect the public.”

Just as smoking, substance use, and a failure to use seatbelts drove lawmakers to pass laws, social media addiction is a public health threat that requires legislative action, he added.

“These social media platforms sit in a regulatory, statutory void,” Conaway said.

Conaway introduced a  in January that would establish a commission to study the effects on adolescents of smartphone and social media usage in school and  in December intended to protect the privacy of underage social media users.

The latter bill also aims to prevent addiction by requiring a “data protection impact assessment” in which social media companies would have to reveal if they use features — like auto-play videos, rewards for time spent, and notifications — intended to keep users online longer.

Several other Assembly Democrats have signed on as prime sponsors of the bills, including Shanique Speight of Essex County, Dan Benson of Mercer County, and Carol Murphy of Burlington County.

A national fight

Conaway and his colleagues are far from the first lawmakers to try to break social media’s stranglehold on youth nationally. This kind of legislation is popping up in statehouses around the country.

Maryland lawmakers earlier this month introduced  that would restrict data collection and profiling of children, mandate high-privacy settings by default, and restrict geolocation. Last year, Minnesota lawmakers considered but failed to pass  that would have prohibited platforms from using recommendation algorithms for underage users. And a bill in California would have allowed parents to sue social media companies for addicting their kids, but it also 

Social media addiction has driven federal policymakers to act too.

In Congress, a  would have increased parental controls of screen time, auto-play, and privacy, and it would have required social media companies to reveal how they use algorithms and targeted advertising with their underage users. That bill, introduced last year, also failed. Even the U.S. Supreme Court is  with two cases on their schedule this week that seek to hold Google and Twitter liable for what their algorithms promote or suggest.

The industry has lobbied against the bills wherever they arise.

But Conaway isn’t cowed. Anyone skeptical of the need for legislative intervention should consider social media’s  on adolescents and its role in bullying, Conaway said, citing the  whose classmates attacked her and posted videos on social media afterward.

“This is not our first rodeo,” Conaway said. “We have to try to forge ahead, even in the face of opposition that’s going to come from outside the Legislature, but I imagine also within the Legislature. I’m hoping that a number of my colleagues will recognize the danger as I do, and we can get this legislation moving on to the governor’s desk.”

Some aren’t waiting for lawmakers to act.

In Morris County, the School District of the Chathams filed  against Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Google, and YouTube last week, saying the platforms fueled students’ addiction and mental health struggles through “manipulative” business practices.

District officials want a judge to declare social media a public nuisance and are seeking unspecified damages to recover rising costs, including hiring more counselors to help students and disciplinary staff to handle online harassment, threats, and bullying.

“These severe mental health consequences have placed severe burdens on society and, in particular, schools. It cannot be stated strongly enough that social media has drastically changed the high school and middle school experience of students across the nation,” the lawsuit alleges.

As for Das, she eventually pulled the plug herself: her only lingering indulgence is just an occasional scroll through TikTok.

“I used to have all the social media, like Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter — all of it,” she said. “But I realized that there was not a lot of substance to it. It was all so repetitive.”

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But as much as Arthur is concerned about the heightened amount of time students spend in the digital world since the start of the pandemic, he knows screen time is here to stay.

“It’s an unusual problem because we can’t take it away from them,” said Arthur, who teaches sixth grade at Meadowlark Elementary School in Salt Lake City. “The world just doesn’t work like that anymore. They have to use technology.”

Arthur isn’t the only one who sees it this way. Researchers, parents and teachers are finding that even as youth screen time has shot up as a result of the pandemic, it’s time to reframe how we think about it.

Teachers like Arthur are finding ways to deliberately and innovatively embrace technology in their lessons, knowing students will find it more engaging.

Arthur said that he utilizes simulations on Minecraft, a popular video game for youth, as a way for students to learn about ancient civilizations. But he also emphasizes balance and makes sure all math instruction is on paper. That way, children can have a tactile learning experience, as well as a break from screens, he said.

Managing screen time should be guided by whether technology is displacing time that should be spent in other areas, such as exercising, play dates with friends or sleeping, said Dr. Dave Anderson, a clinical psychologist at the Child Mind Institute in New York City.

“Making technology into some sort of boogeyman” should be left in 2018, Anderson said. The focus now should be on helping children and adolescents healthily engage with technology.

“This idea that it’s hard for kids to get off screens, it’s true of the entire human population,” he said. “What we try to do is put in the same behavioral safeguards with children as we do with adults.”

He suggested rewarding children who are able to get off of screens quickly, and putting time limits on technology that include warnings when time is almost up.

Prior to the pandemic, children were more comfortable in traditional classroom settings with pencils and paper, teacher Arthur said, adding that now, there’s a noticeable ease that falls on the room when children are able to use devices in lessons.

There’s a “chill familiarity,” he said, where they sit back, loosen up, and have an easier time talking to each other. Not only do they comfortably utilize chat functions, he said, but they also seem more free to make in-person conversations because holding the device puts them at ease.

“When they had to leave school, school became a more foreign place and even in some ways a scary place because it was synonymous with sickness and risk, so they understand ‘I’m not 100% safe in this place, but I’m super comfortable on this device because I’ve been using it nonstop,’” Arthur said. “It’s familiar. It’s the one thing that transcended through the pandemic. It brought the whole world to them when they were stuck at home.”

With children exhibiting so much more comfort in digital spaces, and skyrocketing screen time (one study found kids and adolescents doubled their recreational screen time during the pandemic), experts have also been raising the alarm on how this might impact child development, especially when it comes to in-person socialization skills, such as facial expression control, polite conversation and active listening.

But there’s another side, said Anderson.

“To act as if kids are not developing social skills online is fallacy because what we all know is that email voice, text voice, the ability to interact effectively over Zoom or chat are integral to the modern workplace,” Anderson said. “You need both.”

Anderson said some behavioral issues, such as shorter attention spans, are not an irreversible side effect of too much screen time—the screen itself has not inherently decreased attention spans.

“It’s because the screen itself is so interesting and vibrant in the stimuli that it’s presenting. It can be difficult for kids who are spending a lot of time on screens to then have the practice of being in the real world, paying attention to stimuli that are much less fast paced,” Anderson said.

Arthur knows the problem of demonizing screens, instead of working with them, all too well.

When classes were online, he had a student who didn’t log on for two days. When he called the student’s parents to check in, he discovered the student had his laptop taken away as a punishment.

Taking the laptop away may have solved one problem, but it created another, forcing the student to miss out on essential learning.

“They said ‘we don’t know how to keep him on just the school stuff because he keeps going on the other stuff, so our only answer is to take the whole thing away,” Arthur said. “And that’s our dilemma. We have to understand the technology enough as adults to figure out how to let in the good and keep out the bad.”