By Erin Popolo
Congressman Frank Pallone, please help my daughter’s death not be in vain. As a longtime champion of online privacy and safety, I am urging you to back the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), a Senate bill with 66 bi-partisan co-sponsors already. Its passage now requires only a floor vote in the Senate and, with your help, a companion bill in the House.
Tragically, any action on your part will be too late for my daughter, Emily Michaela Murillo. But I know it will save countless other young lives and it’s this knowledge that keeps me going.
Emily was just 17 when she took her own life after a year of intense cyber-bullying. Although Emily suffered from dyslexia, ADHD and bipolar disorder, she was the kindest person with the biggest heart. If a stranger had needed the shirt off of her back, she would have gladly handed it over.
She often struggled to connect with other children, but she’d quickly turn most adults into her best friend. She had endless love for animals and those she was close to. There is not a minute that passes that I don’t miss her, that my heart doesn’t ache.
Emily had never been a big social media user. But her social isolation during the pandemic forced her online more than she’d ever been before. She liked to watch videos on TikTok and branched out into using Instagram and Snapchat during the pandemic. It was on these latter two platforms that she suffered the worst bullying of her life.
She’s not alone. In an average week on Instagram almost 49% of 13 to 15-year-old users reported witnessing bullying, as have 50% of 16 to 17-year-olds. In that same time frame, nearly 22% of 13 to 15-year-olds reported they were the target of bullying.
A CDC study found that in New Jersey, specifically, 15.4% of high schoolers were electronically bullied in 2021. All of which may contribute to skyrocketing suicide rates among youth. Last year, the Surgeon General even issued an advisorycautioning that social media use may be harming children’s mental health.
And only earlier this month, a Pew Research Center report found that about three-quarters of 13 to 17-year-olds feel peaceful or happy without their phones.
When kids picked on Emily when she was younger, I could always fill her back up with encouragement, support and love. It worked for a while, until it didn’t. When the bullies came for her online, we tried to block them. They found ways around us, messaging Emily’s friends about her instead, knowing they would tell Emily what they’d seen.
Some bullies even went to her workplace to taunt her. I searched desperately for ways to report the abuse but never succeeded. Once I discovered an email for Instagram but received no reply. I unfortunately could not out-love the damage the bullies were doing to Emily.
Social media platforms have led to child suicide not just because of cyberbullying. Children have also taken their lives after strangers they “met” online sexually exploited them. In fact, in 2022, more than 3,000 minors were the victims of sextortion schemes. Others have died from taking drugs purchased on these platforms that they didn’t know were laced with fentanyl, or after trying viral, but deadly, challenges that went terribly wrong.
Initially, social media was a wonderful way to connect with long-lost friends and family. Now it is rife with lethal risks for children, targeted ads, and algorithms designed to keep young people online as long as possible, often sending them down deadly rabbit holes. And I’m not talking about kids watching funny animal videos for too long.
I’m talking about children being fed content that teaches them how to starve themselves, or cut themselves and hide it from their parents. Social media has become a place scattered with so many booby traps and landmines no parent could ever even hope to lead their child through safely. I know this because I tried and failed in the most devastating way.
There has been no new law passed to protect children on the internet in 25 years. But a growing body of research, as well as testimony from multiple whistleblowers, has shown platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and others now pose severe dangers to children’s mental and physical health. In response, lawmakers have done nothing. KOSA is a chance to do better.
This long-overdue bill, imposes a “duty of care” on big tech to prevent a concise list of harms children are exposed to on social media platforms including eating disorders, sexual exploitation, bullying, substance abuse, self-harm and suicidal behaviors.
It requires that social media companies turn on the strongest privacy settings by default and gives children the ability to turn off addictive design features like the algorithms that recommend content users themselves have not searched. Critically, KOSA requires that these platforms create effective systems for reporting abuse, a provision that might have saved my daughter’s life. In addition, companies would have to perform annual audits of their compliance with the bill.
What KOSA does not do is censor content, prevent young people from searching for information, or block access to evidence-backed information and clinical resources.
The choice for lawmakers now, including you, Mr. Pallone, is simple: Do nothing and continue to let more children die or get behind KOSA, introduce a House companion bill, and save countless lives. It’s too late for my Emmy. Please don’t let it be for any other child ever again.
Erin Popolo is an activist for children’s safety online. Her daughter died by suicide in 2021 after intense cyberbullying.
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