Testimony

Testimony in Support of the Vermont Kids Code (S.289)

Feb 2024 🇺🇸 Design It For Us

In testimony to Vermont's Senate Committee on Economic Development, Housing, and General Affairs, Design It For Us co-chair Zamaan Qureshi urged lawmakers to pass the Vermont Kids Code, a design-code bill requiring platforms to set their strictest privacy defaults for minors. Then a college senior, Qureshi argued that opaque recommendation algorithms and default settings are associated with harm to young users, and pre-emptively countered anticipated industry objections on free speech, parental rights, and age verification. He cited a Washington Post report on low adoption of Instagram's parental-supervision setting and a public poll on support for platform regulation to argue that voluntary industry safeguards were reaching only a small share of teen users. TechKids Foundation includes this testimony as a documented example of youth-led advocacy for state design-code legislation, offered in Qureshi's capacity as a coalition leader rather than as clinical or diagnostic evidence.

Fewer than 10% of Instagram teens enabled parental supervision

Qureshi's testimony cites a Washington Post report finding that by the end of 2022, fewer than 10 percent of teens on Meta's Instagram had enabled the platform's parental-supervision setting.

87% support government action on social media harms

Testimony cites a poll reporting that 87% of the electorate believed it was important for government to act on harms associated with social media platforms.

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CITATION

Qureshi, Zamaan. Testimony before the Vermont Senate Committee on Economic Development, Housing, and General Affairs on S.289 (the Vermont Kids Code). Design It For Us, February 27, 2024. https://legislature.vermont.gov/Documents/2024/WorkGroups/Senate%20Economic%20Development/Bills/S.289/Witness%20Documents/S.289~Zamaan%20Qureshi~Build%20It%20For%20Us%20Testimony~2-27-2024.pdf

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