We are saying, no, you are not going to addict our most vulnerable by allowing them to engage. And I think that you should know that young children and young adults want to know where we’ve been. It was very interesting, there was a group of PACE girls that was up, they were asked about the bill, they were supportive of the bill, of a ban. Harking on what their world might look like without social media, I think a lot of young girls and men are okay with what that would look like. I had the Future Farmers of America in my office, they thought it was a great bill. So very different groups of children who are saying where have you all been, adults, while we’ve been exploited, while we’ve been targeted, while we’ve been commoditized?

Personally, in the last five years I have met two young females under the age of 15 whose lives have been impacted greatly and their families have been devastated by inappropriate pictures of these two young women showing up on platforms and traveling through the entire school where these students had to pick up and go to a different school, and it’s heartbreaking. I also think about, again as a parent of three, the peer pressure that we’ve all had with these smart phones. And it’s not like you can buy your child a flip phone and send them to school; we talk so much about bullying today and there’s so much bullying that happens over whether another child has a smartphone, so as a parent you have to make that decision, are you going to buy your child that smartphone. The same thing extends to these social media platforms. Children are bullied and chastised if they’re not on these social media platforms, and you know what, this is a step that takes the parents off the hook of these difficult decisions of no I do not want my child to be on here, but how is Suzie going to be treated by all of the other students, and how is she going to be bullied because she doesn’t have social media. So I believe that this is a great bill, it’s long overdue.

Social media companies themselves know how addictive their technology is, and they’re even unable to police the bad guys,” McFarland said on the House floor before the vote. “Despite their best efforts, content about human trafficking and child pornography keep slipping into the algorithm.

In the state of Florida we’re saying enough is enough. You’re not going to build a business on the backs of our children and harming our children.

I see the effects. I see how children are introduced to criminal offenses; I see how children are harmed. Life experiences and friends of mine who are educators have had in-depth conversations with me about how social media has affected the ability for children to learn in school, how children don’t feel like they’re even able to go to school. And I understand the concerns about the parental verification and the 16 and under, and all of those things, but at some point when is enough going to be enough, right? At some point, when are we going to put our foot down? And like I said, I’m proud of this bill, HB 1, I’m proud to co-sponsor it because this is truly one of the bills that we are hearing this year that is not a bipartisan bill, that this is a bill that this is about protecting children, making sure our children are safe, making sure that the state of Florida leads on that.

Freedom and security, freedom and safety are always in conflict with one another, that’s part of what we struggle with as legislators, but I want to tell you about one Floridian where they came down on this issue. I want to tell you about a middle schooler, she was described as pretty and smart by her peers, but she endured a year of taunting and bullying and just endless, endless harassment from her peers. They would ask her, ‘why are you alive, you’re ugly, can you please die?’ After a year of that, she climbed a tower and jumped to her death. That is tragic and we can’t allow it. When that is happening in the state of Florida, we have a duty and a responsibility to act and I think that this bill gets us closer to what is so desperately needed.

I was talking to this one young lady one morning and I said ‘Did you see in the news today the legislature wants to ban social media accounts for minors under the age of 16?’ And she says ‘yeah, I saw that.’ And I said, ‘well, what do you think of it?’ And she said, ‘I think if they had done it a long time ago I would have enjoyed being a kid.’ I want you to think about that, it doesn’t have to be that way in the state of Florida.

Social media and the impacts it’s having on our youth is a concern—no doubt. But we don’t allow our kids to go into casinos, we don’t allow our 11 year olds to buy alcohol. There’s no parental consent that you can sign to let your kid go into a liquor store. There are expectations, there is framework, there is guardrails, that this legislature and the ones before us have set as they deem necessary action to keep our children safe. So social media is an industry in the same regard as gaming or alcohol.