U.S. Senator Katie Britt, R-Alabama, was one of five senators to sign onto a letter late last week demanding additional information from Meta, Facebook’s parent company, regarding the company’s online safety practices specifically for young users.
The senators’ letter comes after the recent unsealing of a plaintiff’s brief in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The brief alleged that Meta employees were aware of potential and ongoing harms to young users, including negative impacts on users’ attention and emotional wellbeing, exposure to inappropriate contact by adults, and difficulties taking down sex trafficking and child sexual abuse material, CSAM, on their platforms.
“These developments are alarming, and we are deeply concerned by allegations that Meta was not only aware of these risks, but may have delayed product design changes or prevented public disclosure of these findings,” the senators wrote in their letter.
The senators are now demanding answers to several questions by March 6, 2026, including: further explanation of Meta’s user safety protocols; how the company evaluates trade-offs between engagement and user safety in its product design; why the company delayed implementing its “private by default” feature for young users; what knowledge the company has of how its platforms can impact the wellbeing of young users; and how Meta responds to reports of sex trafficking and CSAM on its platforms.
Alongside Britt, U.S. Senators Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii; James Lankford, R-Oklahoma; Chris Coons, D-Delaware; and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota, also signed onto the letter.
Britt has long criticized the effects of social media on children and teens, having previously introduced the Kids Off Social Media Act to ban children under the age of 13 from using such platforms and to prohibit algorithmic targeting of users under 17. Britt is also a sponsor of the Stop the Scroll Act alongside U.S. Senator John Fetterman, D-Pennsylvania, which would require social media platforms to institute mental health warning labels.
