The New House Bill Will Not Put a Dent to Student’s Social Media Addiction Problem

Social Media Youth Addiction Law

House Bill 2411–1136 encourages healthier social media use for children under 18. Representatives Rose Pugliese and Judy Amabile and Senators Lisa Cutter and Jim Smallwood sponsor the bill, which is designed to expand student wellness programs in Colorado. The bill requires social media platforms to display a popup notification to users under 18. The notification is activated when a child has spent one hour on social media platforms in 24 hours or if that student is on social media between 10 pm and 6 am.

According to the Colorado.gov website:

“Notification must include data on the public health impacts of social media use on youth users’ mental and physical health from peer-reviewed scholarly articles in the mental health and technology resource bank. The bill appropriates $13,974 from the general fund to the Department of Education for use by the student learning division to implement the bill.”

This bill will be implemented on or after January 1, 2026. A copy of the bill can be found HERE:

This bill will not put a dent in the problems of social media addiction for youth. Students are already well aware of the dangers and pitfalls of social media addiction because all of us adults tell them so. This is likened to the warning that cigarette smoking is bad for your health. We knew that long before that warning was put on cigarette packs. The people who loved to smoke (addicted?) were not going to stop smoking because of that warning.

The use of cell phones by teens is out of control. Surveys say teens spend between 7 to nine hours daily on social media. If school lasts from 8 to 3 pm, and teens receive 8 hours of sleep a day, that means that every waking hour, students are on their phones if they are not in school or sleep. Of course, that is not how it is. Much of those 7 to 9 hours a day on social media is while students are in school. At least half of those hours spent online are done while they are supposed to be learning.

This new house bill, though made with good intentions, will do more for the resumes of the sponsoring politicians than it will for our youth. Teens will swat those popups away like flies on their noses and keep going. Schools that don’t outright ban smartphones from the school leave teachers with yet another layer of difficulty they have to go through to do their job of teaching. The addiction is palatable and has become worse after the pandemic.

Cell phones are ruining public education. We have never seen anything like this before. If we look into the past, drugs have always been a problem in school. However, even in the worst schools, there was relatively only a small number of students who had real drug problems. It may sound more like bad news because it receives much attention. However, with cell phones, we are dealing with over 95 % of students who carry phones to school. And the addiction percentage, as well as the total numbers, are much higher, and this is a crisis.

Take a random poll of 100 teachers, and they will tell you that cell phone use in schools is one of their struggles, which makes teaching much more complicated than it should be. Having popup warnings or reminders will not improve numbers or reverse trends, but since politicians are pushing this bill, it is a good talking point on what they are doing to curb this crisis.

Even though this bill is designed to help with this problem, it does little to help with the mental health issues, poor grades, and cyberbullying that overuse of social media creates and promotes. We must re-think this relatively new problem that has already been stacked upon many issues in public schools. An outright ban seems draconian, but I would do that until we collectively determine the best approach to this issue.