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Educators, parents and a teen urge Indiana to restrict childrensocial media, cite links to depression
Summary
A series of testimonies in Indiana urged lawmakers to require parental permission and remove addictive features from social platforms, citing a meta-analysis linking screen time to higher depression risk and sharing personal accounts of student harm.
An educator and parent told policymakers that social media is causing daily harm to children and urged coordinated action by parents, schools and state leaders to protect young people. "We are losing the fight to protect our children," the educator said, framing the issue as an urgent public-health concern.
Speakers at the event described both research findings and personal incidents they said illustrated the risks. A classroom educator summarized a meta-analysis of 21 cross-sectional and five longitudinal studies covering about 55,000 participants, saying the review found that "time spent on social media was significantly associated with a high risk of depression symptoms" and that the risk rose by "13% for each hour of screen time." The speaker said social platforms also undermine attention and deep reading in school, and that algorithmic design is "intentionally designed to capture the attention, manipulate behavior, and keep young users online for as long as possible."
A counselor and parent recounted a school incident she said demonstrated severe outcomes: she described a 12-year-old standing in a school restroom yelling, "I want to die," because the child compared herself to images on Instagram. The counselor said students form identities around curated images, contributing to bullying, harassment and unhealthy social pressure that "don't stop online." A high-school student who spoke said she would have preferred not to have social media at a younger age and urged adults to act together, noting classmates without social accounts were more engaged in sports and in-person relationships.
The final speaker urged Indiana to "lead with strong protections" for children, proposing that children be allowed on social media only with parental permission and that platforms remove "addictive harmful features." The remarks were a call for policy change rather than a presentation of specific legal language; no statutes, ordinance numbers or formal motions were presented during the session.
Speakers emphasized that individual families and schools cannot fully offset platform design and argued for coordinated policy and community responses. The event compiled research citations and personal testimony to support policy proposals; the session did not record any formal votes or motions, and no next procedural steps were announced.
