Educators and families in New York state are pushing for policies to protect children on online platforms.
Advocates gathered in Albany on Friday to address the various harms that children are facing on their phones and computers.
Mary Banaszak, president-elect of the New York School Counselors Association, said childhood should be a time of exploration, but students have shifted to an unsupervised online community. That is putting their safety at risk.
“A fourth-grade student shared she was being stalked by a classmate on a video game,” Banaszak said. “She blocked that person. Instead, that student made a new ID and joined the game again. He had no concept of the boundaries of saying ‘stop’ ... He said, ‘It's just a game,’ when the counselor questioned him.”
Banaszak said another elementary student reported that a second-grade classmate was learning how to build a bomb from an online source.
“Across the state, across school buildings, across all grade levels, we are seeing increases in anxiety, school avoidance, aggression and attendance,” she said. “Issues directly related to social media and digital communications that students are bombarded with in isolation without adult support or supervision.”
She says policymakers need to remedy the onslaught of student mental health challenges, extremism and safety breaches caused by unchecked digital platforms.
Mary Rodee, a parent and teacher in Canton, located in the North Country, was among them.
She listed about 20 types of harmful content children can encounter online — including things like disinformation, extremist recruiting, lack of privacy protection, addictive algorithms, dangerous social media challenges, and catfishing.
“It's hard to read because I know the kids who died because of these,” Rodee said.
Her son died by suicide after being targeted by a sextortion scheme on social media, she said. Within about six hours, she said, he was threatened to send thousands of dollars or an explicit photo of him would be shared with everyone he knew.
“He got braces on that day. We didn't go to school. I dropped him off at his dad's house at 10:30 with some ibuprofen and a milkshake,” she said, “At 2:30, he was in a body bag because someone separated him from everything he knew to be true and right.”
Rodee is among the grassroots advocates lobbying for greater regulations of tech companies to hold them accountable for the effect their online platforms have on children’s well-being.
She and others are calling on Congress to pass the Kids Online Safety Act that passed the senate in July. A House committee advanced GOP legislation this week that critics say is weaker than the Senate version.
