WHEREAS, in a 2023 Gallup Poll, the average US teenager spends 4.8 hours on social media sites [1];

WHEREAS a 2022 meta analysis showed that the odds of depression increased by about 13% for every additional hour per day of social media use for adolescents [2];

WHEREAS Facebook itself determined that 12.5 percent of its users were engaging in compulsive use of social media that affected their sleep, work, parenting or relationships, and they found that teens have even less self-control than adults [3];

WHEREAS more time spent on social media is significantly associated with higher rates of depression [4];

WHEREAS there is a temporal association between social media use in 9-12-year-olds and subsequent depression [5];

WHEREAS nearly two-thirds of Generation Z teens and young adults, in six countries, said they or their friends have been targeted in online “sextortion” schemes [6];

WHEREAS 13.9% of Instagram users age 13-15 received unwanted sexual advances within the last seven days using data from a 2021 internal study from Meta [7];

WHEREAS reducing social media use among heavy social media users reporting symptoms of depression or anxiety yielded significant reductions in symptoms of depression, anxiety and fear of missing out, and increased hours of sleep relative to a comparable control group [8];

WHEREAS reduction in social media use improved mental health [9];

WHEREAS estimates show that a plausible population impact of social media reduction for just two weeks by young adults would be a decline in the prevalence of clinical depression by roughly one third, and a plausible impact of a consequent return to regular social media use would be the rise in the prevalence of clinical depression by one half [10];