Fifty years ago, there were people focused on addicting our kids. We called those people “pushers.” In schools and in neighborhoods, they pressed addictive drugs on immature kids. They crafted techniques to induce kids to become addicts. Their business was highly profitable — if devastating to their targets. And even those who opposed the regulation of narcotics among adults agreed that it was wrong to exploit the bad judgment of people who had not even developed the mental capacity to understand the risks they faced. Everyone supported keeping pushers far away from kids.
Today, there is a different generation of pushers. We call them “gaming and social media companies.” In schools and online, these businesses deploy content that is not just fun, or interesting, or wildly popular, but addictive. Billion-dollar AI-driven algorithms craft techniques for drawing kids into that addictive content. Exploiting underdeveloped psychologies and highly developed anxieties, these companies earn billions of dollars each week — billions — by dragging all of our children down the rabbit holes of addictive content. Study after study has linked these businesses to an extraordinary rise in teen suicide, especially among girls, and to destructive social behavior generally.
Nations like China are responding to these threats by regulating heavily the use by children of games…
