Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of

unchanging truth.

For the Colston Center, I'm John Stone Street.

In a rare moment of bipartisanship, senators on both sides of the aisle have agreed

that social media is not safe for teens and that it's time for the government

to do something about it. Public concern about social media's ill effects,

especially on the mental health of teenagers, has been growing for years.

Back in 2018, sociologist Gene Twangie exposed that teen's mental health had been in steep decline

since 2012.

That's the first year, the majority of Americans own smartphones.

In 2021 a series of articles in the Wall Street Journal exposed that Instagram

fueled body image issues and suicidal ideation and that Facebook knew this but still failed to do

anything about it. And that same year a congressional hearing featuring Facebook

whistleblower Francis Haugan focused on these harms and another congressional hearing just last week, which was called Big Tech and the Child Sexual

Exploitation crisis, lawmakers pulled no punches.

Quote, you have blood on your hands, Senator Lindsey Graham, said to social media

CEOs present at the hearing, and in a post-hearing event at the Heritage

Foundation, Senator Marsha Blackburn observed this.

For years, big tech companies have made empty promises about how they're going to

address this rampant abuse, this malicious content, and the criminal activity that's on their

platforms. What we found out is, Big tech is incapable of policing themselves.

They're incapable of putting together best practices and they're incapable of implementing that.

...