We Regulate Toys. Why Not Algorithms?

Americans require more safety testing for a teddy bear than for an algorithm.

That sounds absurd. Yet it captures one of the most consequential regulatory gaps of the digital age.

For generations, Americans have accepted a simple proposition: Companies that profit from products used by children have a responsibility to make those products reasonably safe.

Cribs must satisfy federal standards. Toy manufacturers are expected to identify foreseeable hazards. Pharmaceutical companies disclose risks. Automakers conduct crash tests and comply with extensive safety requirements before their products ever reach consumers.

We do not demand perfection.

We demand responsibility.

Yet one of the most powerful forces in modern childhood reached millions of children without facing similar expectations.

That force is social media.

For nearly two decades, policymakers have treated social-media platforms as an exception. While manufacturers of physical products have long been expected to anticipate foreseeable harms and reduce them where possible, digital platforms have often operated under a different assumption: growth first, accountability later.

As a result, the national conversation about social media has become trapped in the wrong debate.

We argue about free speech.

We argue about parental responsibility.

We argue about screen time.

Those questions matter. But they obscure a more fundamental one:

Why should digital products be exempt from the basic duty of care we impose on virtually every other product used by children?

Defenders of the status quo typically offer the same answer: Social media is different because it involves expression.

That is true.

Social-media platforms host political debate, journalism, entertainment, education and personal communication. Any effort to regulate them must respect constitutional protections.

But product safety and free speech have never been mutually exclusive.

Advertising is speech.

Financial disclosures are speech.

Product labeling is speech.

Yet none exists outside laws designed to protect consumers from foreseeable harm.

The relevant question is not whether social media contains speech.

It plainly does.

The question is whether the existence of speech should exempt companies from taking reasonable steps to reduce foreseeable risks to children.

That distinction becomes increasingly important once we acknowledge what modern platforms actually are.

The industry’s preferred description is that social-media companies are merely neutral platforms connecting users with content created by others.

The reality is more complicated.

Modern platforms do not simply display information. They shape experience. Algorithms determine what users see and what they do not. Recommendation systems direct attention. Notifications pull users back into applications. Infinite scrolling removes natural stopping points. Engagement systems are optimized to maximize participation, retention and time spent on the platform.

These are not accidental features.

They are deliberate design choices.

And design choices have consequences.

That reality is increasingly being recognized not only by parents and researchers, but by courts.

In March, a New Mexico jury found Meta liable under state law after hearing allegations that the company misled users about platform safety and failed to adequately protect children from sexual predators operating on Facebook and Instagram. The jury ordered the company to pay $375 million. Meta denies wrongdoing and is appealing the verdict.

Several months later, a New Mexico court ordered Meta to pay an additional $567 million and imposed sweeping requirements affecting young users, including stronger restrictions on adult contact with minors, limits on notifications and enhanced safeguards intended to reduce exploitation and other harms. The combined liability approached $1 billion. Meta is appealing those rulings as well.

Whatever the final outcome, the significance of the case extends far beyond one company.

It reflects a broader shift in how Americans are beginning to think about social media.

For years, debates about these platforms focused primarily on content. Increasingly, attention is turning toward design.

That shift became even more apparent this month when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit allowed more than 3,000 lawsuits against Meta, Google, TikTok and Snapchat to move forward. The plaintiffs, including states, municipalities, school districts, parents and individuals, allege that social-media companies intentionally designed products that are addictive to young users and contributed to anxiety, depression, body-image concerns and other youth mental-health harms. The court rejected an effort to halt the litigation under Section 230 at this stage, concluding that the appeal came too early in the process.

The ruling did not establish liability.

Nor did it determine that the plaintiffs are correct.

But it did something important: It allowed the central argument to be tested.

Can technology companies be held accountable not merely for content posted by users, but for the design of products that shape behavior?

That question strikes at the heart of the broader debate over digital childhood.

Consider the automobile.

When cars transformed American life, policymakers faced a challenge that sounds remarkably familiar today.

Automobiles generated extraordinary benefits. They also generated extraordinary risks.

Society rejected two simplistic responses.

We did not ban automobiles.

And we did not conclude that every accident was solely the responsibility of drivers.

Instead, we demanded safer design.

Seatbelts.

Airbags.

Crash testing.

Child safety seats.

None eliminated risk.

All reduced foreseeable harm.

Importantly, automakers once argued that accidents were primarily the product of human behavior. Regulators eventually concluded that safer design could reduce harm even when drivers made mistakes.

Social-media companies are making a remarkably similar argument today.

Parents unquestionably bear primary responsibility for raising children.

But acknowledging that responsibility does not eliminate the responsibilities of corporations.

Parents did not design recommendation algorithms.

Parents did not create infinite-scroll interfaces.

Parents do not possess access to the vast behavioral data used by platforms to maximize engagement.

Expecting parents alone to manage products built by thousands of engineers and refined through constant experimentation is neither realistic nor fair.

Individual tragedies help illuminate what abstractions often conceal.

Alexander Neville was 14 years old when he purchased what he believed was a prescription pill from a dealer he encountered through Snapchat.

The pill contained fentanyl.

He died.

His death does not establish that platforms are legally responsible for every harmful interaction that occurs online.

But it highlights an essential truth: Social-media platforms are not merely passive conduits. They are engineered environments. They create the conditions under which people meet, communicate and make decisions.

And the creators of environments have long been expected to exercise reasonable care.

None of this requires viewing social media as inherently harmful.

Millions of young people use these platforms every day to maintain friendships, find communities, develop interests and express themselves creatively.

The question is not whether social media should exist.

The question is whether companies that profit from shaping childhood should bear responsibilities commensurate with their influence.

For generations, Americans have answered that question consistently.

When companies profit from products used by children, they assume special obligations toward them.

That principle made toys safer.

It made medicines safer.

It made automobiles safer.

There is no compelling reason it should not make digital products safer as well.

The lawsuits moving through the courts are not fundamentally about censorship.

They are about accountability.

They ask whether the companies that design the digital environments children inhabit owe those children a duty of reasonable care.

Most Americans already know the answer.

The real question is why our laws took so long to ask it.

We demanded safety standards when toys entered the nursery, when automobiles filled our streets and when pharmaceuticals became commonplace.

Social media may be the defining product of a generation.

The question is not whether it should exist. The question is why it remains the only product shaping childhood that we do not expect to be reasonably safe.

What would a reasonable duty of care for social-media companies look like to you? I’d love to hear your thoughts and perspective in the comments.

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