Ms Frances Haugen:

I am not a child psychologist, and I encourage the committee to consult with experts who have much more education than I do. However, I strongly believe that we probably need greater protections for children for all these platforms. Right now, there are children who are developing self-soothing behaviours where when they feel an interest, they pull up Instagram and just start scrolling. If those children are being made interested by the content on Instagram, and Facebook's research says there are many children who are developing eating disorders and things like self-harm because of the content they are being exposed to, and if their self-soothing behaviour ends up exposing them to more of the thing that is causing them harm, that is a huge problem. At a minimum, things such as the rate limiting for people under the age of 15 or 16 years old is important, with an hour, two hours or three hours a day, some limit like that, but also being even more aggressive and saying that perhaps somebody should not join until the person is 15 years old. I would support examining that question.