Zuck built AI friends. Kids need real ones.

Tucked away in the MAGA monstrosity known as the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ was legislation on artificial intelligence. The House-passed version of the bill imposed a moratorium on states regulating AI for the next 10 years. This is so reckless that Senate Republicans revolted and removed it.

Doing nothing on AI has been rejected. So what’s the something?

Democrats should focus on where the impact of AI is both immediate and harmful: social media.

I have a 5, 3, and 2 year old. Mark Zuckerberg’s new vision is for Meta's AI chatbots to become friends for kids. I don't want my children to have AI friends. I want my children to have real friends.

On June 4, 2025 I joined Abundance co-author Derek Thompson and host of The Realignment Marshall Kosloff on stage at WelcomeFest.

My wife and I are dreading their first smartphone. We do not want the social media corporations turning our kids into products. Screen time devours family time, in service of the economy of endless scrolling.

Our concerns are visceral. They are also affirmed by evidence. Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation, has chronicled the harms. Since 2012, when smartphones became ubiquitous, mental health has plummeted for young women and antisocial behavior has risen for young men. Haidt notes that the social media platforms are well aware, too.

An internal report from TikTok noted that:

“Compulsive usage correlates with a slew of negative mental health effects like loss of analytical skills, memory formation, contextual thinking, conversational depth, empathy, and increased anxiety,” in addition to “interfer[ing] with essential personal responsibilities like sufficient sleep, work/school responsibilities, and connecting with loved ones.”

Although these harms are known, the company often chooses not to act. For example, one TikTok employee explained,

“When we make changes, we make sure core metrics aren’t affected.” This is because “leaders don’t buy into problems” with compulsive usage, and addressing it is “not a priority for any other team.”

Parents by ourselves, though, can't beat back these trillion-dollar corporations. We can't even unglue ourselves from the screen, much less digitally native teenagers. Three months ago, I bought How to Break up with your phone: the 30-day plan to take back your life. I'm still on Day 1.

Social media is a network effects problem – everybody does it because everybody does it. That means it requires a collective solution. Congress can drive that solution. To do so, Democrats must:

• Ban smartphones in schools, bell to bell

• Raise the age of Internet adulthood to at least 16, from 13. And make it enforceable with age-verification standards

• Force the divestment of TikTok from Chinese Communist Party control

• Revoke Section 230, which gives social media immunity from litigation equalled only by the gun lobby

• Enact children's online privacy standards, including prevention of targeted advertising and data erasure as the default

• Levy the platforms’ digital advertising revenue as a tax on attention-fracking, as California is attempting. Direct some of the revenue to fix what they have broken. For example: utilize tax credits for hiring local journalists, as Canada has done; or surge 1:1, daily tutoring to students, as school districts are increasingly doing

Social media's lobby against any reforms is maniacal. First, they try to hide behind 'free speech'. But, Section 230 is not the First Amendment. Platforms shouldn't get exemptions from tort law that journalists don't get.

Then, the social media corporations pile on China. "If you tax us, China will win on AI!" But OpenAI just raised the largest private round of funding in history. There's plenty of money getting invested in AI.

Finally – the corporations don't show up at all. They give money to other groups who lobby on their behalf.

Congress must bulldoze these social media platforms. Democrats should lead in freeing Washington from corporate capture and young minds from toxic manipulation.