Written Statement Before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law
Suicide and self-harm are complex and never caused by one factor alone. Problematic screen use, cyberbullying, harmful content, and online exploitation may increase risk or intensify existing distress. If someone is in immediate danger or emotional crisis in the United States, call or text 988.
Outside the U.S.? Find your local helpline at findahelpline.com.
In written testimony to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law — on a panel that also included representatives of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube — Tristan Harris, President and Co-Founder of the Center for Humane Technology, argued that social media platforms' engagement-driven business model is associated with societal harms including political polarization, extremism, and declining trust in factual information, and referenced concerns linking heavy platform use to strained youth mental health. He cited the reach of the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, in which he appears, as evidence of public appetite for reform, and urged the subcommittee to judge platforms by whether their incentives strengthen or degrade collective attention and discourse, rather than by self-reported moderation statistics. TechKids Foundation includes this testimony as a Congressional record of Harris's policy argument; because it references self-harm-linked concerns, it carries this library's standard safety note.
Harris, Tristan. Written Statement submitted to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, for its hearing "Algorithms and Amplification: How Social Media Platforms' Design Choices Shape Our Discourse and Our Minds," April 27, 2021.