We advocate for youth-centered policy in Congress and at the NC state legislature.
Manipulative Social Media Platforms
As young people, we’ve suffered as social media platforms have used manipulative design features to keep us online for as long as possible, leading to increases in loneliness, eating disorders, depression, anxiety, and political extermism.
We advocate for legislation that would prevent social media companies from using manipulative design features to harm our generation’s mental health. Our generation spends over 8 hours online each day, so it’s critical that we re-design our online spaces to foster community and fulfillment rather than isolation and hatred.
In North Carolina, our student team wrote novel legislation that would protect minor’s data from being used to fuel manipulative algorithms. The bill was endorsed by several NC institutions, cosponsored by 62 NC representatives (over half of the NC House), and passed unanimously out of the House Judiciary 3 Committee. Learn more about our bill by reading this article from Spectrum News.
In Congress, we advocate for the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), a comprehensive bill that would prevent social media companies from using manipulative design features. We initially wrote and advocated for our own bill to address these issues, but we endorsed the Kids Online Safety Act after the bill was updated to ensure that young people’s civil liberties would be protected. We’ve met with over 70 Congressional offices and helped to advocate for the Filter Bubble amendment to KOSA, which lets minors and adults opt out of manipulative recommendation algorithms. See our letter endorsing KOSA here.
Responsible Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence is already changing the world, and we are leveraging our perspectives as digital natives to help policymakers create thoughtful policy on AI. Our early online experiences have attuned us to unique issues with AI, such as the mental health implications of people becoming emotionally dependent on chatbots.
We working with thought partners in nonprofits and on Capitol Hill to help design AI policy legislation and to provide youth perspectives on proposed AI legislation. Students on our team have written AI mental health legislation that is currently being vetted by US Senate offices and will be introduced in the Senate in the coming months.
Ending Child Marriage
We worked with a wide coalition of activists, politicians, and nonprofits to advocate for an end to predatory child marriages in North Carolina. Prior to our work, adults would come to North Carolina as a place to legally coerce children into forced marriages.
We played a supporting role in developing the legislation in meetings with to end child marriage by helping to craft language that would be effective and acceptable to politicians.
We also lobbied legislators through phone banking (organizing students to call key legislators in support of the bill) and helping to organize other student-led groups to support the effort, as well as going to the General Assembly to lobby legislators with the coalition.
As a result, the NC General Assembly passed legislation to raise the marriage age to 16, require that the age gap of the people to be married is no more than four years, and create safeguards like a waiting period and parental permission.
