LANCASTER, N.Y. — With mental health becoming more of a major concern for children in recent years, one local lawmaker joined education and health professionals Friday to talk about a way to help out.
New York State Assemblywoman Monica Wallace (D-Lancaster) is introducing legislation to educate kids on the potential harms of social media.
Wallace says just like we educate kids and their parents about the dangers of drugs and alcohol, we need to also teach them the dangers of consequences of certain behaviors online.
"I'm introducing legislation to create a public awareness campaign to educate kids and the public on the dangers of social media. This legislation would also require schools to teach the dangers and risks as part of their curriculum," she said during a press conference.
The US Surgeon General has also recently warned that even age 13 is probably too young to allow kids to start to use social media.
“I, personally, based on the data I’ve seen, believe that 13 is too early," he said. "It’s a time where it’s really important for us to be thoughtful about what’s going into how they think about their own self-worth and their relationships and the skewed and often distorted environment of social media often does a disservice to many of those children," said U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy in an interview with CNN.
Kids Escaping Drugs has a program called Face2Face, and one of the topics they educate parents on is the 'Dark Side of Social Media". For more information on that program: https://www.ked.org/dark-side-of-social-media