The heads of Meta, Alphabet, TikTok, and Snap have been summoned by the US Senate for a hearing on the impact of social media on children and legal pressure.
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The US House of Representatives has ordered the CEOs of Silicon Valley's biggest tech companies to appear before a Capitol Hill hearing on children's online safety.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, TikTok CEO Shouji Chew and Snap CEO Evan Spiegel have been summoned by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley to testify. Reuters The move comes amid growing legal and political pressure on the companies over the impact of social media on children, its addictive nature and the harm it causes online.
At the hearing in June, lawmakers will publicly question the company leaders about the impact of social media platforms on children and adolescents. Lawmakers such as Senators Marsha Blackburn and Richard Blumenthal have been pushing for legislation to hold tech companies more accountable for the impact of their services. The hearing comes amid a growing legal challenge to big tech companies in the US. According to Reuters, there are thousands of lawsuits filed in federal and state courts in California against Meta, Google, TikTok and Snap. The lawsuits allege that the companies designed their platforms to be addictive and harmful to children. In March, Meta and Google lost the first jury trial in such cases. The lawsuit also ordered the platforms to pay $6 million in damages to victims. TikTok and Snap settled the case before the trial. In another case, a New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay $375 million in damages over claims of child exploitation and user safety.
After the US House of Representatives failed to pass a federal law, 20 states in the US, including California, Utah, Texas, Florida, and Louisiana, introduced laws on children's use of social media last year. France, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Germany, Norway, and other European countries have also been preparing stricter laws on children's online safety, platform accountability, and content regulation in recent years. In January 2024, US lawmakers asked tough questions to Zuckerberg and other tech company executives at a similar hearing.
