by William R. Quan
For years, Tennessee has fought Big Tech tooth and nail – in our state legislature, in our courtrooms, and in coalition with attorneys general across the country. This summer and fall, that fight delivered two major victories for Tennessee families.
In August, Attorney General Skrmetti joined 52 chief legal officers in announcing a landmark $17.1 billion multistate settlement with Meta over claims that it engineered Instagram and Facebook with addictive features and misled parents about its platforms’ safety. More than $750 million is earmarked for the Tennessee Children’s Digital Protection Fund to support mental health resources and education programs.
Weeks later, General Skrmetti notched another win. A Williamson County court refused Roblox’s request to dismiss Tennessee’s lawsuit alleging the company lured children onto its platform with safety promises it knowingly broke – including round-the-clock moderation and removal of harmful content within minutes. The court rejected Roblox’s attempt to hide behind Section 230 and the First Amendment, ruling the case is about what the company said about its own safety features. Roblox will now have to answer for those claims.
None of this happened overnight. In 2022, Tennessee led the country with the Protect Tennessee Minors Act, requiring age checks for websites hosting obscene content. We followed with the Protecting Kids On Social Media Act, requiring parental consent before minors create social media accounts, and the Teen Social Media and Internet Safety Act, bringing digital literacy education into public schools.
These laws work because they rest on a fundamental principle: parents, not Silicon Valley engineers, have the right to decide what their children see and do online. Tennessee enshrined that principle in law. Now General Skrmetti is forcing Big Tech to put real money and real accountability behind it.
The Meta settlement requires real changes to Facebook and Instagram: strict time limits, default blocks for apps at night, silenced notifications during school, and stronger parental controls. But its architects designed it as a floor, not a ceiling. If Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube – the most-used social media platforms by teens – adopt comparable protections, the daily time limit on each Meta platform drops from two hours to one for ten years.
That incentive matters, because the cost of Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube’s inaction is being paid by Tennessee’s children and the families working to protect them.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation reported more than 22,000 open child exploitation cases last fall, a 140% increase since 2020 driven largely by social media. Commissioner Andrew Boatman named Snapchat specifically as a top platform where predators coerce children into sending explicit images, then extort them for money. Internal Snap documents show the company was receiving 10,000 sextortion reports per month and chose not to act because fixing the problem would be too expensive.
Documents leaked during an ongoing multistate investigation reveal similar design features baked into TikTok. The company’s own research found users can become addicted after just 35 minutes, and that compulsive use correlates with loss of memory formation, empathy, and analytical skills, along with increased anxiety. Employees appeared more preoccupied with the platform’s reputation than with making it safer for children.
YouTube, meanwhile, is used by nine in ten U.S. teens. Internal documents show employees discussed viewer “addiction” as a corporate goal, and its autoplay, infinite scroll, and personalized recommendations resemble what one court filing called a “digital casino” for children’s attention. Despite thousands of lawsuits over these design choices, YouTube has not adopted a single protection Meta just agreed to.
These platforms know what is happening on their apps. They have simply chosen not to fix it.
That’s why parents, child advocates, and conservative family policy leaders are now demanding the entire industry meet the same basic standards. Led by the American Principles Project, 90+ advocates wrote to the CEOs of YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat calling on them to voluntarily adopt the same safeguards Meta agreed to. As their letter puts it, Meta’s settlement leaves the job of protecting kids “very much incomplete.” Families deserve one consistent standard on every platform their children use.
If the industry still won’t act, Congress must force the issue. The Kids Online Safety Act would require platforms to turn off addictive design features by default for minors. The App Store Accountability Act would shut down the most common end-run around state protections by requiring parental consent before minors download age-restricted apps. Both bills have strong Tennessee support.
Protecting children from exploitation is a moral obligation that goes to the heart of keeping the American family whole. Until Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube match the standard Meta has set, Tennessee’s years-long work protecting kids will remain unfinished.
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William R. Quan is a North Carolina native, Chairman of the Marshall County Young Republicans, and a resident of Marshall County.
