Congress' social media crossroads

The ideas and innovators shaping health care

Nov 08, 2024 View in browser   By Ruth Reader, Daniel Payne, Carmen Paun and Erin Schumaker TECH MAZE Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) comforts parents of children harmed by social media. | Kent Nishimura/Getty Images Congress returns to Washington on Tuesday and has just weeks to decide whether it will, for the first time, pass legislation to regulate social media. The Kids Online Safety Act that the Senate passed 91-3 in July aims to protect children from the mental health harms the apps are widely agreed to cause. The probability that the next Congress will be run by Republicans doesn’t bode well for enactment, but President-elect Donald Trump is a wild card. State of play: The Senate bill requires social media companies to protect the privacy of children and shield them from targeted advertising and manipulative algorithms. But when the House Energy and Commerce Committee took up its version of the bill in September, it made major changes that advocates said weakened it. The Republican-led panel approved it over Democrats’ objections. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) opposes the bill. He speaks for the party’s right flank, which worries it could be used to censor the views of religious and social conservatives. Still, a coalition of parents who blame social media for harming their children say they’re going to keep pushing. They’re leaning on the bill’s Republican backers in the Senate, led by Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), to get it over the finish line. Why it matters: Three years ago, Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee, told senators the company had internal data showing that large percentages of teens using its photo-sharing app Instagram experienced negative self-perceptions, anxiety and depression. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy says many children spend hours a day scrolling social media, disrupting their sleep, and are potentially addicted to it. And he says research has found links between the amount of time kids spend on the apps and mental illness, including depression and anxiety, body dissatisfaction, disordered eating and low self-esteem. What’s next? Advocacy groups plan to enlist the bill’s backers in the Senate to pressure their House counterparts when Congress returns. If Congress doesn’t act this year, the supporters will have to start again from scratch. Trump could help revive the legislation, or end the discussion. He hasn’t said what he wants to do. WELCOME TO FUTURE PULSE Washington, D.C. | Getty Images This is where we explore the ideas and innovators shaping health care.  The Australian government plans to ban children under 16 from social media. Some youth mental health experts worry teenagers will use the apps covertly. Share any thoughts, news, tips and feedback with Carmen Paun at cpaun@politico.com, Daniel Payne at dpayne@politico.com, Ruth Reader at rreader@politico.com, or Erin Schumaker at eschumaker@politico.com . Send tips securely through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp.  WASHINGTON WATCH He has policy ideas, but will Congress listen? | Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images There’s a long row to hoe. … Big ag has a lot of influence on Midwestern Republicans. Jeff Hutt of the Make America Healthy Again PAC The “Make America Healthy Again” movement that’s caught President-elect Donald Trump’s attention is clear-eyed about the challenge it will face in a Republican Party that’s still conditioned to favor the interests of business and agriculture. So says Jeff Hutt, a spokesperson for the Make America Healthy Again PAC affiliated with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and former national field director for Kennedy’s presidential campaign. Kennedy is the movement’s de facto leader. Why it matters: MAHA advocates believe the government has long favored the business interests of food manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies over the health of Americans, permitting them to sell products that cause disease, and it wants Trump to stop it. “Established Republicans are going to have to be the most brave for this to be successful,” Hutt said. “That could be an impediment.” Leaders in the MAHA movement expect they’ll face resistance on both sides of the aisle as they pursue rules to bar pesticides and food additives they consider unhealthy, he added. But MAHAians also recognize the challenges before them in how they’re seen — in large part because of their many disagreements with public health experts in academia and government. “A lot of the MAHA movement has been depicted as witchcraft-ery,” Hutt said. “We need to move beyond that.” Kennedy’s opposition to current vaccination recommendations, for instance, and claims that vaccines cause autism, has made some establishment Republicans uncomfortable. What’s next? Former Kennedy campaign staffers are helping the Trump transition team vet people who could be part of the next administration, Hutt said, pointing to a MAHA webpage created for the public to suggest candidates for administration appointments. And Senate Republicans are leaving the door open to confirming Kennedy to Trump’s Cabinet. The Trump campaign declined to comment on the involvement of former Kennedy staffers. “President-Elect Trump will begin making decisions on who will serve in his second Administration soon,” Karoline Leavitt, Trump campaign national press secretary, said in an email. “Those decisions will be announced when they are made.” MAHA’s expecting a big role since it was key to Trump’s victory, Hutt said. WORLDVIEW Britain's got a plan to make sure it doesn't happen again. | Nam Y. Huh/AP The United Kingdom’s government is developing what it calls the world’s first early warning system for future pandemics. How so? The British are partnering with a homegrown life sciences company, Oxford Nanopore Technologies, to provide technology that can diagnose infectious diseases faster than current methods, the U.K. Department of Health and Social Care said in a statement. The company’s product, developed with the U.K.’s National Health Service, will be rolled out to as many as 30 sites. The tool helps doctors diagnose patients suspected of having severe acute respiratory infections within six hours and prescribe appropriate treatment, the department said. The system uses sequencing technology — a technique that can read long strands of DNA or RNA at once, without breaking them into smaller fragments — to analyze genes and pathogens. It's been tested in a successful pilot project at a central London hospital. Why it matters: After the height of the Covid pandemic, health officials in many parts of the world have focused on improving their countries’ capacities to quickly detect the spread of pathogens that could cause an outbreak. “Our [National Health Service] was already on its knees when the pandemic struck, and it was hit harder than any other comparable healthcare system,” Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting said in a statement, pledging that the new partnership will avoid a repeat.   Follow us on Twitter Carmen Paun @carmenpaun Daniel Payne @_daniel_payne Ruth Reader @RuthReader Erin Schumaker @erinlschumaker   Follow us

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