How Pennsylvania Republican Legislators Put Businesses & Big Tech Over Our Children’s Mental Health

By: Jessica Schortemeyer

SB22 was introduced June 14, 2023, by Senator Vincent Hughes and was referred to the Communications & Technology Committee with bipartisan support. The bill as originally written aimed to protect minors and their mental health from social media. SB22 received bipartisan support and had a full range of cosponsors, which is rare in Harrisburg. The original bill would have encompassed many social media applications. It also required a parent to approve a minor’s social media account.

However, SB22 was amended on September 19, 2023, prior to passing out of committee. The amendment changed the previous definition of a social media company, knocking out most platforms, but still including approximately 10 platforms, one being Facebook.

In the original bill, SB22 allowed parents to sue a social media company that “intentionally, knowingly, recklessly or negligently causes or encourages a minor to access content which subjects the minor to a risk of emotional or physical harm…”. But again, this was amended, handing jurisdiction over to the PA Attorney General. In the event that the social media would pay damages, the plaintiff (the family) would not receive any of the money; rather, any damages collected would be deposited into the School Safety & Security Fund to be used exclusively for mental health services for students. Wait – what? Is this any different than the 1986 Act and taking liability away from the product or service? Does this amended version not violate our constitutional rights to be able to sue a company for damages?

Side Note: The School Safety & Security Committee or SSSC was created within Pennsylvania Commission on Crime & Delinquency (PCCD) to make schools a safer place in 2018 by lawmakers.

The original bill, SB22 was firm in prohibiting social media companies from approving the creation of an account of a minor without parental consent. Rightfully so, given the U.S. Surgeon General’s recent social media advisory in May 2023. Now, it’s been amended to read that companies should make reasonable efforts to verify a user’s age upon opening an account.

So, who added this amendment that gutted the bill? Some readers might be surprised that Senator Phillips-Hill introduced the amendment. I have doubts that she or her staff wrote it, but either way she blew up her own bill that was given to Senator Hughes to run. Senator Phillips-Hill in the past has supported parental rights, so it is shocking to me that she introduced an amendment that clearly cut parental rights out of the picture. Word on Constitutional Avenue is that a lobbying firm, DT Firm, for Roblox wrote the amendment. Roblox – the gaming platform that describes themselves as a global digital platform that brings people together through play? This is the same platform where an adult just abducted an 11 y.o. girl from her home in NJ not once but twice after connecting with her on Roblox.

Note: Those following mental health in schools, may recognize the DT Firm, as the same lobbying firm who is advocating for Kooth.

The original bill also prohibited data mining of minors, the sale of a minor’s data, and use of a minor’s personal data in an algorithmic recommendation system. These were all gone in the amended version – curtailed to the liking of social media platforms. This bill was timely, much needed, and had bipartisan support. Yet, our Senators – holding a Republican majority – couldn’t get the job done.

A seat at the table

In September, a friend of mine requested a meeting with Senator Phillips-Hill to discuss social media and the impact it is having on our youth’s mental health. We were impressed with the overall bill and very excited to support it. However, that came to a stumbling halt once SB22 was amended. We spent a great deal of time discussing our concerns regarding the state of our youth’s mental health status related to social media. The senator realized that we had some major concerns with the way SB22 was amended and asked us to come up with a list so we could discuss them at our next meeting.

Three weeks later, we returned, only to be told that the bill was now dead since we had asked the bill to be placed on hold. (A bill being considered “dead” means that it is not expected to move forward.) The senator and staffers said they lost their window of opportunity to pass the bill in tandem with SB7 & SB340. At first, I was a bit flabbergasted that we were being blamed for a bill not moving forward. For the record, we never made such a request for them to hold the bill. We only asked if they would allow us the opportunity to discuss our concerns and make suggestions for a way forward. We had taken the quickest available meeting, and then the legislator’s office had cancelled and then rescheduled a few days later. If they were worried about this window of opportunity, surely, they could have explained the urgency of meeting and made our meeting a priority.

Inconsistencies

The meeting was awkward as we had just been informed that the bill was considered dead. We were only prepared with our talking points about why the amendments were damaging to parental rights. We were assured that passing something was better than passing nothing because they could always amend what was in place and improve on it. The more I thought about this, though, the more I was convinced this was not true. We have seen bad bills pass; we know that many times nothing is better than something in the world of politics.

As the conversation continued, the Senator told us she was not willing to write out Roblox (even though that’s what the amendment that she introduced effectively did). Several senators told us that in caucus a member threatened to blow up the bill if Roblox was not removed as he didn’t believe it qualified as social media. He supposedly made this claim because he plays it with his son. (However, the reality is that this bill wouldn’t have prevented him from playing with his son, because minors would have just needed parental permission.) We were also told that in caucus there were some members who were more concerned about putting more restrictions on businesses and they would not vote for the bill. That comment really stood out to me. In actuality, we weren’t the cause of this bill not moving; Republican senators were.

Red Flags

Senator Phillips-Hill office tried to reassure us that they had some of the biggest social media companies in agreement to this amended version. Why would we feel good about that? Who are we protecting here? If we’re making big strides at protecting children in this way, we aren’t really expecting social media companies to be excited about it.

Let’s play this out. The bill was amended, passed out of committee, and was ready for the Senate floor. I can only assume that the majority of Democrats would have stuck together on this bill, as they do with almost every other bill. If that was the case, the Republicans only needed four Republicans to switch over. It is highly likely that we didn’t even need the entire Republican caucus to move this – only a few outliers to amend the bill, pass it, and move it on to the House.

So – why are Republican legislators putting businesses over our children’s mental health? They have sworn to uphold the constitution. The constitution was not written for businesses, it was written for WE THE PEOPLE: individual citizens, young and old.

While I am disappointed, I am not too surprised, as we have dealt with similar opposition to Representative Diamond’s bill HB2013 in 2021-2022. This was a constitutional amendment to add medical freedom to our constitution. We heard the same reason for not passing HB2013 – that the bill would tell businesses what to do. However, don’t we already tell businesses not to discriminate against sex, race, ethnicity, disability, sexuality and more?

At the end of the day, if we, as a grassroots movement, have become so powerful that we were able to hold a bill from progressing, I’ll take that and move forward. Parents deserve to be able to parent their children, and children deserve to have parents that care enough to make these decisions regarding their mental health. We are no worse off now than when this bill was introduced. Citizens of Pennsylvania deserve to have legislators who are willing to go up against huge corporations, including Big Tech and Big Pharma. If you haven’t already, it’s time – time to get involved and start demanding better from our legislators. Our children & grandchildren depend on us.