When Emma Lembke was a 12-year-old 6th grader, she was excited to join the world of social networks. This was a way to instantly connect with millions of people around the world from his home in Birmingham, Alabama, he thought. Lembke was eager to express himself through an online persona and explore new information that he would not otherwise have access to. She signed up for Instagram for the first time, and within the first week, she followed Oprah and the Olive Garden.
But the social media glow quickly faded. Lembke said she began quantifying her self-worth by her follower count and the number of “likes” she received on her posts. Soon she found herself spending hours consuming images of unrealistic body standards, triggering a pattern of her own disordered eating.
By 9th grade, Lembke had reached a breaking point.
“I saw my friends and everyone around me have increased rates of anxiety, depression and body image issues,” said Lembke, who is now a student at Washington University in St. Louis. “But that was in middle school. I can’t imagine the mental health crisis and the physical crisis that this will cause for generations as technology becomes more pervasive in these kids’ lives and developmental periods as that grow.”
Today, Lembke wants to hold social media companies accountable. And she wants lawmakers to be the ones to do it.
Lembke has teamed up with Brown University junior Aliza Kopans to found Tech(nically) Politics, a youth advocacy and lobby group pushing for social media regulation. They are not among the families pursuing lawsuits against social media companies that Sharyn Alfonsi reported on 60 Minutes this week.
Kopans also came to the initiative from his own negative experience online. After years of pushing her parents to let her join social media, they gave in when she was in 8th grade. Kopans said she soon found herself mindlessly scrolling through Instagram, pouring over pictures of her friends’ supposedly perfect lives and reading the positive comments she wasn’t getting on her own posts.
“That year was the worst mental health year of my life,” Kopans said. “And of course there are other factors that contributed to that. And I think Instagram really exacerbated what I was feeling.”
Kopans and Lembke now film other young people who share stories like theirs and then send the footage to lawmakers across the country. They hope to influence elected officials to enact legislation regulating how social media companies design for teen users.
Last summer, the pair spearheaded an open letter to tech CEOs that was published in the LA Times. He called on tech companies to redesign how teens experience their platforms, including ending targeted ads and turning off autoplay by default. Many platforms currently have such protections for users under 13, but “the negative impacts of social media don’t suddenly disappear when we turn 13,” the letter states.
Your advocacy has already been successful. Last fall, California topped the California Age Appropriate Design Code Actlandmark legislation requiring online platforms to incorporate safeguards to mitigate risks for all users under the age of 18. This law will enter into force in 2024.
Kopans and Lembke said voices like theirs are vital to regulating social media today. Politicians from older generations, they said, cannot understand the struggles of a generation of digital natives. The pair also insisted they are not trying to stifle innovation. Instead, they ask tech companies to create technologies with the best interest of their users in mind.
“Tech companies need to be held accountable by lawmakers in order to be accountable,” Lembke said. “They have to innovate for young people. They have to innovate for their users because we’re building technology that serves society, rather than exploiting the user base they’ve built.”
The video above was originally posted on December 11, 2022 and was produced by Brit McCandless Farmer and Will Croxton. It was edited by Will Croxton.
