Attorney General Ellison’s report on social media’s effect on young people wins national award

National Conference of State Legislatures recognizes report with 2024 Notable Document Award; second time AG’s Office so honored

August 20, 2024 (SAINT PAUL) —  The National Conference of State Legislatures has conferred a 2024 Notable Document Award on the Office of Attorney General Keith Ellison for the Office’s Report on Emerging Technology and Its Effects on Youth Well-Being. According to the NCSL, the award, which is made by a panel of experienced legislative librarians, recognizes “excellence in documents or publication that explore topics of interest to legislators and legislative staff and present substantive material in an outstanding format.”

This marks the second time the NCSL has honored Attorney General Ellison’s Office with a Notable Document Award: in August 2020, the organization also granted the Office the award for its report of the Attorney General’s Advisory Task Force on Lowering Pharmaceutical Drug Prices.

“When you find yourself lost, the first thing you need is a map,” said Attorney General Keith Ellison. “A lot of Minnesotans feel lost when it comes to emerging technologies like social media. Parents, policymakers, and even young people themselves know something is wrong. They see social media harming kids, but because this technology is so new, many people don’t know exactly how that harm is being caused or what can be done about it.

“My Office’s goal when preparing our Report on Emerging Technology was to provide Minnesotans with a map to a better and safer future for young people online. I appreciate the Legislature’s partnership in this effort. I will continue to do everything in my power to protect the safety and well-being of kids across our state,” Attorney General Ellison concluded.

Last year, the Minnesota Legislature charged Attorney General Ellison’s office with producing the report, and in February 2024, the Office issued the Report on Emerging Technology and Its Effects on Youth Well-Being to help the public and policymakers better understand the unique and multi-faceted ways in which emerging technologies like social media harm the well-being of young people, as well as the specific design choices and features that lead to this harm. The report also analyzes previous legislative efforts to curb that harm to show readers what has worked and what has fallen short. Finally, the report offers recommendations for legislation to create a more positive online environment for young people in Minnesota.

The Minnesota legislature used the information in the report when drafting the Prohibiting Social Media Manipulation Act (HF 4400/SF 4696), which requires social media platforms to disclose key information about:

• how their algorithms account for user preference and quality of content, which is important because many algorithms prioritize sensational, untrue, or disturbing content over the clearly stated preferences of their users
• how they limit excessive account interactions, like fake accounts, bots, or kids spending too much screen time
• time-sensitive notifications to users and how platforms determine if something is time sensitive, which is a tactic social media companies use to lure users back into their app
• all product experiments that have been conducted on 1,000 or more users, including a description of the experimental conditions and the results of the product experiment for all experimental conditions on users' viewing or engaging with content that:
  1. users indicate to be high or low quality;
  2. users indicate complies or does not comply with the users' expressed preferences;
  3. violates platform policies.

The Act goes into effect on July 1, 2025. If a social media platform fails to disclose any of that information, the Act empowers the Attorney General’s Office to enforce compliance.

Attorney General Ellison has taken other steps to protect children and youth from the harms of social media. In October 2023, he joined a bipartisan coalition of 33 attorneys general in filing a lawsuit against Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, for knowingly designing and deploying features that harm the mental health of young people. In addition, Attorney General Ellison is part of a nationwide investigation into whether the company behind TikTok violated state consumer protection laws by deploying features that negatively impact the mental health of its users.

The Report on Emerging Technology and Its Effects on Youth Well-Being is available on Attorney General Ellison’s website.