By: Keturah Taylor
The National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) and its current President, Oregon AG Ellen Rosenblum, hosted the Presidential Initiative Summit earlier this month entitled America’s Youth: AGs Looking Out for the Next Generation.
AGs, AG staff, experts, and stakeholders took a deep dive into the myriad ways that AGs can take action to protect youth. AG Rosenblum’s initiative has taken an expansive view of that goal, including identifying and mitigating potential threats presented by technology and social media, promoting physical and mental health, and furthering financial literacy. The Summit featured substantive panels on all of these topics, with esteemed panelists including AGs, health professionals, and youth advocates.
This article focuses on the AG enforcement priorities highlighted at the Summit as a guide for businesses in relevant industries seeking to avoid AG scrutiny.
AGs Continue to Express Concern Over Potential Health Risks Associated with Social Media
AG Rosenblum engaged in conversation over concerns that have been raised about the potential mental health impacts of social media with Dr. Sejal Hathi, Director of the Oregon Health Authority who also previously served as the White House’s Senior Policy Advisor for Public Health. AG Rosenblum and Dr. Hathi discussed the U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory on Social Media and Youth Mental Health, as well as the Surgeon General’s recent opinion in the New York Times calling for a warning label on social media platforms.
Dr. Hathi suggested that best practices could be developed for social media users and that harm reduction could be achieved through stronger age verification requirements, more robust parental controls, safety by design interventions (as have been implemented in the United Kingdom and Australia), minimizing data collection for underage users, and maximizing youth privacy protections. Dr. Hathi and AG Rosenblum also discussed New York’s recently enacted SAFE for Kids Act, which requires social media companies to restrict addictive feeds for underage users.
New Mexico AG Raul Torrez also moderated a panel on youth and social media, in which he discussed with the panelists certain design features that could hold the attention of young people for long periods of time, such as “infinite scroll.” Within this dialogue, AG Torrez expressed concern about technological developments often outpacing the rate at which policymakers can identify a potential harm and develop a solution. The panelists also discussed the lawsuit recently filed by AG Torrez against Snap Inc. alleging that certain Snapchat design features facilitate exploitation of minors on the platform. The panelists urged social media companies to consider steps such as making parental controls more accessible or implementing more protective settings for young users by default. In closing, AG Torrez shared his view that it “should not be the burden of grieving parents to shake the conscience of corporate executives,” and indicated that his office is not receptive to arguments from social media companies that place sole responsibility on parents to protect their kids online.
Both regulators and companies have taken notable action since the Summit concluded just over a week ago. A bipartisan coalition of 42 AGs sent a letter to Congress calling on lawmakers to pass legislation requiring a U.S. surgeon general warning on all algorithm-driven social media platforms. And just yesterday, Meta launched Instagram Teen Accounts with built-in protections, for which parental permission is required to change the restrictive settings.
Videogame Platforms Brought Into Scope of Regulatory Scrutiny
Recent conversations surrounding the potential harms of digital platforms have been largely focused on social media and artificial intelligence. However, bringing a new twist to a discussion dating back to at least the 1990s, the Summit re-introduced videogame platforms as another area of concern. As AG Rosenblum put it, gaming is “intertwined with social media, and dominates kids’ attention.”
During a panel moderated by Nevada AG Aaron Ford, videogame platforms were discussed as potentially presenting a variety of financial, privacy, and safety risks to youth. From a financial perspective, there are concerns that in-game purchases can keep users financially invested in a particular game, especially as videogaming sites in some cases allow for game tokens to be traded in a manner that eventually converts in-game value to cryptocurrency. Additionally, the panelists discussed how online videogames can potentially act as a gateway to gambling, both because some videogame features such as “loot crates” arguably function similar to gambling because they involve elements of chance, and because targeted ads for online casinos are prolific on videogame platforms. Of course, the same privacy and safety concerns about social media platforms are present for videogame platforms, including the communication tools available on the platforms as well as chat rooms and forums popular with videogame enthusiasts.
The panelists acknowledged that videogame companies are regulated differently than social media companies under federal and state laws, and that the industry self-regulates under the Entertainment Software Rating Board and provides information and transparency to parents through its rating system. However, they argued that more could be done to protect youth in this area, potentially through policies that protect against gamification turning into gambling and ensuring that videogames are rated correctly.
AGs Explore Ties Between Teen Substance Abuse and Digital Platforms
Renee Roberts Gassen, Director of Outreach for Louisiana AG Liz Murrill, moderated a panel examining the impact of the digital age on teen decision-making regarding the use of vaping, drugs, and alcohol. The panelists drew parallels between cigarette usage in the 1950s and current teen use of drugs and alcohol and recommended steps to curtail usage including media campaigns, limiting product availability, increased pricing (i.e., a “sin tax”), and increasing barriers to licensure for sale. They also discussed the intersection of social media and substance abuse, in particular the proliferation and glamorization of substance use in both user-created content and targeted advertising, as well as the use of social media platforms to acquire drugs and alcohol.
One of the panelists—a plaintiffs’ attorney—highlighted examples of alcohol products arguably marketed toward young people based both on the ad content and product flavoring that mimics candy and may appeal to youth. Notably, the product flavoring concerns are similar to the primary argument underpinning the sweeping AG enforcement actions taken over the past few years to limit the availability of flavored vaping products. For example, just two weeks ago, a coalition of 20 Democratic AGs filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in support of the FDA’s denials of applications to market and sell flavored vape products across state lines. It also echoes prior AG enforcement actions in the 2010s alleging that caffeinated alcohol drinks were marketed toward minors, which ultimately transformed that industry.
* * *
While AG Rosenblum’s term as President of NAAG will come to a close in December, it is apparent from the Summit that the enforcement inquiries prompted by her presidential initiative will persist and likely expand, as AGs remain concerned about the impact of digital platforms on America’s youth.