Assembly Standing Committee on Privacy and Consumer Protection

Good afternoon. We are going to start the hearing of the assembly privacy and consumer protection hearing, and this is an informational hearing on the impact of social media on LGBTQ plus youth, the benefits, the risks, and potential safeguards. So I wanna start, of course, by thanking our panelists for being here today. Obviously, we couldn't have this participation without or this hearing without each and every one of your participation.

I wanna always thank our amazing staff, rules committee, sergeants, and capital support office for helping organize this and, of course, the speaker and his team for approving the hearing and the agenda.

Social media is a conversation we have a lot in this committee. We know that it is a ubiquitous part of life for both our youth and also California's adults. It is utilized from everything from connections to getting political information, to finding new restaurants. But social media can come with real trade offs, including addictive feeds that increase harms ranging from encouraging disordered eating to suicidal ideation and self harm. These harms can be even more pronounced for young people whose brains are still developing.

The recent trials, including the one here in LA, highlight some of the very real dangers faced by our young people online. The cases demonstrate the contrary to statements by some of the social media companies, teens and tweens are a major target of the companies, and they want to hook them young and keep them coming back for life. Social media can also be a hotbed of toxic content from hate to misinformation.

And we have seen many efforts in this committee and this legislature to protect kids online, including assembly member Wicks' age appropriate design act, Senator Skinner's restrictions on addictive feeds, my warning label bill, and this year's 1709 by mister Lowenthal, which would ensure that addictive features are not given to our youngest Californians.

As we've considered many of these proposals, a major challenge has been the concern that these policies may have unintended consequences for LGBTQ plus youth by limiting access to affirming resources and supportive communities that are often essential for self discovery health and well-being, particularly for kids growing up in unsupportive or isolated households.

At the same time, we also know that young LGBTQ plus kids are at a greater risk of experiencing harmful content, including cyberbullying, harassment, hate speech, and exploitation. I wanted to have this hearing because these conversations have often, I think, been too shallow, And we wanted to spend a little more time getting a deeper understanding of the impacts, both good and bad, of social media on our LGBTQ plus youth.

To understand the lived experience of LGBTQ plus youth online, our first panel will provide those perspectives ranging from l g g LGBTQ plus youth experiences online to the advocates discussing youth experiences on social media. Our second panel will present the current research on the benefits and harms of social media for LGBTQ plus youth.

We will end with experiences from an advocacy group in Australia that has worked closely with the Esafety Commissioner's Office to offset potential harms that on the 16 ban may have on the LGBTQ plus youth community.

The purpose of this hearing is not to relitigate bills that have already passed through the committee, but it is to provide an overview of current experiences online and to better inform our policy discussions moving forward. In putting this hearing together, my staff has worked closely with the staff of our very own LGBTQ plus caucus.

And I wanna thank Assemblymember Ward who's here in his capacity both as a committee member of this committee, but also as chair of that caucus for his collaboration and his team's very hard work in helping put together this agenda. So with that, mister Ward, do you wanna make any comments?

Well, thank you, Chair Bauer-Kahan, and I just wanna reflect right back at you. And I wanna thank you and your committee staff as well for working with me, our committee staff, our caucus staff as well as the LGEU caucus members. I'm also proud to be a member of the privacy and consumer protection committee. And, of course, I wanna advance to thank all of our panelists and participants here today.

We're, you know, very interested in having this hearing because we know that it reflects something we are increasingly, seeing as we are dealing with the nuances of the policy making that we're working on.

That social media is neither wholly good nor wholly harmful, but it's both and sometimes often at the same time. And we know that that tension can be particularly exacerbated for LGBTQ youth. For many young people, particularly on the rural areas or some of the other in supportive environments, in our in our state, online spaces can be a lifeline. And at the same time, they offer connection, visibility, and understanding of one's identity, a sense of belonging, that may not really exist offline in their immediate surroundings.

And as you mentioned, we can't ignore some of the growing body of evidence showing a real and serious harm.

And this isn't listen. This is specific to just LGBTQ youth. Right? We see this with all all youth as well when we think about, as you mentioned, cyber bullying, harassment, hate speech, and exploitation, but we know that some of the platform designs can drive compulsive use and negatively impact the mental health of our children. And as we have heard in prior legislative discussions, LGBTQ youth themselves report both sides of this experience, and they recognize the benefits of social media while also potentially experiencing its harms.

And that dual reality is what really makes this issue so complex and nuanced. It's why a one size fits all approach, to a lot of this policy making is likely to, not be, sufficient. And the question before is isn't whether social media should exist in young people's lives. It already does and, practically, it will. The question is, how do we ensure that these spaces are safer, that they're healthier, and they're more supportive?

And so I wanna thank you for the panelists that are gonna be here today, to be able to talk about the lived experiences of LGBTQ, to talk about the role of LGBTQ specific platforms and resources, and also the broader research and policy landscape that's happening both here in California, but was we're also gonna hear in our last panel globally.

So as I think as we move forward, our goal should be really clear that we, intend to be able to reduce harm while preserving access to critical resources, community, and support that LGBTQs rely on. And that requires a very thoughtful and balanced policy making, which is grounded in evidence, responsive to live experience, and flexible enough to be able to evolve alongside technology as it evolves. And so I wanna thank you again, for everyone's participation.

I wanna thank, Chair Bauer-Kahan and, and Committee, staff as well for providing this platform to be able to elevate the issues that are so important to the LGBTQ community.

As you had noted, this isn't something that we all of a sudden are starting to see in, this year's cohort of bills. This is an issue that's kinda come up for several years now, and so I appreciate the special attention, to our LGBTQ youth. Very much looking forward to today's discussion, and I guess I'll turn it to you to kick it off.

Awesome. Thank you, hair Ward. I wanted to note that we are gonna have, quite a few members of our LGBTQ plus caucus joining us today on the dais at some point. Assembly members Gonzales, Elhawari, Jackson, Zbur, Solace, and Lee will all be joining us at some point. So we welcome them to the committee.

And lastly, assembly member Shiava will be filling in for assembly member Lowenthal. With that, let's turn it over to panel one. So we have three individuals on panel one. Maddie Roby, the marketing manager for the Alliance for Trans Youth Rights, Shay Gardner, director of policy and research for LGBTQ LGBTQTECH, and Casey Pick, senior director of law and policy at the Trevor Project.

Awesome. Hello. I am kicking us off today. As introduced, my name is Maddie. My pronouns are they/them, and I'm the marketing manager with Alliance for Trans Youth Rights.

And I'm here to share about my lived experiences as a trans person who used social media to come into my identity as a youth. I still remember the first time that I heard the word transgender. It was on a TV show where a trans person was introduced in a particularly unflattering light. Every character who interacted with them belittled them, used anti translators to refer to them, or treated their identity as a joke.

It was the first time that my own experience was being described to me, and it was through the lens of vitriol and hate.

Even with that as the basis for my understanding, the label resonated enough with me that I hopped online the second the episode ended so I could learn more. I was

12 years old then, and that was the start of a journey that spanned almost two decades since. My only exposure to trans people beyond the Internet existed in the same vein as that initial introduction. I grew up in a small conservative town in California and went to a high school where I could count the number of out LGBTQ kids on one hand.

Before I even fully understood the concept, my parents would point out gender nonconforming people on the street by laughing and saying that they were so glad that I wasn't that. Media at the time primarily painted trans people as villains, punchlines, and comedic relief.

I had nowhere to turn to for genuine representation or validation, and I didn't know that exploring my identity was an option until I found the LGBTQ community online. When I first started to explore my identity, being trans wasn't talked about as widely as it is today. It was a concept that only existed in one off forums and message boards alongside resources that were sorely lacking and glossaries that barely touched on the t in LGBT.

But this was around the same time that social media was becoming a major part of so many of our daily lives, and that's what allowed me to find myself in ways I never would have been able to otherwise. At the start of my journey, social media was the safest place for me to explore what it meant to be trans.

I knew I wouldn't have familial support, and I was afraid of how my peers would respond to any version of me that didn't fit their expectations. But online, I didn't have those same fears. I didn't need to worry that I was asking for too much when I told someone my chosen name.

I didn't need to censor my words for fear that I was going to accidentally out myself like I did every time I sat at the dinner table, and I didn't need to feel so uncomfortable all the time. I could just be a kid who belonged.

That belonging allowed me to expand my understanding of myself in so many different ways. Tumblr, for instance, is the first platform where I started to experiment with my pronouns. Tumblr is largely considered to be an anonymous and text based social media platform. For me, that meant I was able to present myself the way I wanted to be known. The name, pronouns, and identity labels that I used were never once questioned.

This was distinctly different from meeting and interacting with people in real life who often decided that my name and pronouns were optional or that they didn't suit me so they wouldn't be used. Physical spaces always made me feel like I was asking for too much to be seen as I am. Online spaces, on the other hand, allowed me to express myself without the fear of being corrected or judged.

More than offering me the room to specific safety tips and life saving resources by entering online spaces where trans people came together to share their experiences. I learned on social media that the safest way to wear chest binders is to take breaks every six to eight hours and to never wear wear them during strenuous activities or sleep.

Up to that point, I was wearing my binder twenty four seven, including doubling up and wearing two binders to PE class. While chest binding is safe when done properly, the risk of injury increases when it's not, and I never would have known because it simply wasn't discussed anywhere else. That's not the only life changing resource I came across on social media either. When I eventually came out to my parents, they had an explosive reaction that sent me into active crisis.

I had no one to turn to for support when it came to process such a devastating rejection or even getting through the night.

It was only because of a resource post I saw on social media that I knew The Trevor Project existed, and I was able to call their suicide prevention hotline. And because of that, I wasn't alone during the scariest and most vulnerable moment of my journey up to that point. I can confidently say that the Trevor Project saved my life that night, and I am beyond grateful I came across the post that introduced it to me when I needed it most.

After I connected with the Trevor Project, I was direct directed to Trevor Space, a social networking site for LGBTQ youth that became the first time I was in a dedicated space for people like me. This is where I came across other queer and trans people sharing their stories and began to understand the nuance of my own.

TrevorSpace is where I first saw the word nonbinary, which I had never seen anywhere else, and I realized that it was the term I'd been searching for. I got to see a wide array of experiences beyond the ones that I held to. It opened my eyes in ways I couldn't have imagined based on the very limited content featuring trans people that existed anywhere else.

Even Even as trans people began to be featured more in the media, stories about the trans experience generally only presented one version of it, the version that was most palatable. But on social media and in community spaces, palatability and appealing to the mainstream culture isn't the aim.

Instead, for many of us, it's about living and sharing our truths. I remember bawling my eyes out when I first came across the Instagram account of someone who'd been on hormones for over ten years. The thought that a trans person could achieve that and that I too could not only survive but thrive ten years into the future was just so unbelievable to me.

What I saw made me realize that the future I wanted was possible, and not from second or third hand sources or fictional portrayals or the empty empty promise that things would get better someday, but from the actual people who are living the future that I could finally see myself living to. I began to document my story online to foster that same sense of hope in others.

Through my later teens and adulthood, I built a platform that was focused on LGBTQ education through the lens lens of my lived experiences. I shared everything from queer history to how to guides, to calls to action and advocacy, as well as my own missteps, learning moments, and coming out process. And through it, I, interacted with so many people who told me that they only came into their identity because I helped them access it. None of this is to say that social media is utopia.

As someone who's been online for most of my life and who currently runs the social media for a nonprofit, that serves trans youth, I'm very aware of how harmful online spaces can be, especially for youth who are already disproportionately targeted by hate.

Often, this hate is more pervasive than online spaces because people feel that they can get away with more when they're hidden behind the mask of anonymity. In speaking to my own experiences, I first wanna say that addressing the hate I received online was far more manageable compared to addressing the hate I faced in real life. As the only out trans person at my high school, I didn't have many friends. But for me, that meant more than just sitting alone during lunch every day.

It meant that I was constantly being bullied and harassed by my classmates, from people following me into the bathroom to asking what was in my pants and others trying to physically find out themselves.

I was 13, 14, 15 years old then, a scared kid who didn't know what to do to combat hate that had such immediate and dire consequences. The hate I experienced online was different, if not in content, then in the way I was able to regulate it. Standing up to hate is a skill that I actively built online, and I shouldn't have had to, nor do I think it's the job of vulnerable youth to learn life lessons through their trauma, to be clear.

But I adapted to the situation the same way that I learned which parts of my school campus to avoid. I was able to step away from the computer and regulate myself without fear of direct physical harm.

And even though my hands would shake when I eventually returned to it, I found that I could challenge, challenge the haters, edging or educate them or simply block them if it wasn't worth the anxiety or stress. I was able to empower myself with tools that have become the reason that I can walk into the capital today when anti trans presser protesters are yelling slurs and hate speech because a bill advocating for trans rights is being heard.

Now I know how to deal with hate when the people behind the screen are unmasked. I also wanna emphasize that the community I built online was full of people who were with me through the high moments and the low. Whenever I received a hate comment on a post, I also experienced an outpouring of love and support that drowned it out.

People across the country, people I had never once had a direct face to face interaction with were there to rally behind me even when my own parents and classmates refused to do the same. They offered words of support and encouragement, debunked the hate alongside me, and poked fun at whoever was on the other end of it. Far more often, I felt supported during moments of hate online than I felt knocked down.

It all but became a reprieve from the harassment and discrimination I usually was on the receiving end of. I began to truly understand what the heart of community is.

I know that the instances of cyberbullying that I faced are tame in comparison to what so many other LGBTQ youth experience, and I know that my takeaways are not universal. That's what makes the approach to safety and protection in online spaces far more nuanced than a one size fits all. There's no doubt in my mind that my story would be far more bleak if I didn't have access to social media.

I would have been lonely, starved for the community and connection that I didn't find in physical real world spaces until I was 20 years old. I would have been exposed only to the worst parts of the trans experience, lack of familial and community support, extreme isolation, resource scarcity, and hate that made me feel like that's all my life was ever going to be.

I wouldn't have known that there was a future worth worth holding on for or that there was anyone in the world who would ever see me as me. But because I was able to explore and express my identity in online spaces, I have flourished into someone that I'm genuinely proud to be. I found the name and pronouns that bring me euphoria every time I hear them. I got involved in the advocacy work that has become my career.

I built a community of support that stretches beyond the screen, and I did it because I believed in fighting for the future that I saw possible then and wanted to make sure I can see for myself.

And now here I am, a 29 year old trans person who has survived and, yes, thrived for seventeen whole years after I first learned the word trans. The voice that I began trusting and growing into at 12 years old is the same voice that I'm using to share my story here today. It is incredibly important that we take stories like mine into account when approaching issues that affect youth experiences in online spaces.

These decisions have a direct tangible impact on the lives of LGBTQ youth in California and across the country. And with stakes this high, our youth deserve the consideration.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you so much for sharing your experience.

That is exceedingly tough to follow. I'll do my best. Good afternoon. My name is Shay Gardner. I use she/her pronouns, and I'm the director of policy and research for LGBT Tech.

Thank you to the Assembly Members and to the LGBTQ caucus for the invitation to speak today about social media, LGBTQ plus youth, and the considerations that lawmakers, should be keeping in mind with both. LGBT tech is a national nonprofit working at the intersection of technology, digital equity, privacy, and civil rights. Our policy work focuses on ensuring that LGBTQ plus people can safely and equitably access digital tools and spaces.

Alongside this, our programs have supported a 172 LGBTQ plus community centers across The United States with grant and device distribution, including 21 centers in California. Between 2023 and 2025, our programmatic outreach reached nearly 14,000 LGBTQ plus Californians.

Through our program and our policy efforts, we see every day that technology makes the difference in how members of our community find opportunity and find each other, including the young members of our community who grew up with and on social media. To be clear, platforms online platforms can and do expose young people to serious harms. LGBTQ plus youth experience harassment, misinformation, doxing, predatory behavior, and content moderation failures at significant and disproportionate rates.

Transgender youth, LGBTQ plus youth of color, and those in non affirming homes often carry the highest burden of those harms. Any serious conversation about youth online safety must first acknowledge that.

And acknowledging that is not the same thing as accepting exclusion as the solution. The choice between lawmakers is not between accepting today's platform environment and cutting young people off from social media entirely. We believe there's a broad middle ground of serious and access preserving opportunities. Young people are full of questions, questions about the world, questions about themselves. And for so many LGBTQ plus youth, the first answer to those questions does not come from an offline source.

It comes from seeing someone or something online. That moment of feeling reflected in someone else is certainly not unique to LGBTQ plus people. We acknowledge the extraordinary impact of representation for young people all the time from astronauts to k pop demon hunters. Similarly, for many LGBTQ plus individuals, social media is the first place we hear the word non binary, transgender, bisexual, queer in a way that is not mocking or hostile to us.

It's the first place young people find other young people that feel the same way they do, or they see adults like them living a full life.

That's identity formation. LGBT tech has forthcoming national polling that reflects this reality. Among LGBTQ plus adults who came of age with social media available, nearly nine in ten first joined them as minors. And when asked what they were looking for when joining, significant majorities pointed to LGBTQ plus specific needs from expressing themselves more openly than they could online to exploring and learning about identities and experiences within the community. Early platform access is often where this community begins.

At the same time, our polling tells a more complicated and a more honest story, one where respondents are reporting very high and very similar levels of anti LGBTQ plus harassment in both online and offline spaces. This makes sense

they are utilized is not a silo. It does not exist in a silo. Discrimination of our real world being replicated online and in the worst cases, being amplified online. That said, high rates of harm do not make these spaces feel disposable for those on them. After we polled about harm, we asked about safety.

because digital platforms and the ways

Among our transgender respondents, only forty four percent said they feel safe in physical offline locations, while sixty seven percent said the same about the Internet. It is true that online spaces are not safe enough. It is equally true that for many, online spaces can still be more navigable and more protective than the offline spaces available to them. So I know that is the balance.

Everyone here is being asked to strike, reducing real harms while preserving the access that allows LGBTQ plus youth to find possibility and support.

It is in no way a simple balance. And in recognizing that, I also wanna acknowledge the reality of the policy environment in this building. California lawmakers have been working on youth online safety for years, and we understand that many field platforms have not always been good partners in that process. LGBT tech is not asking this committee to trust platforms more. We are asking California to regulate the harms more precisely.

California already has an emerging, youth online safety infrastructure, with notably age bracket signals, set to become the ground floor within this, social media legislative landscape here. That means California is not starting from zero. The question now for us is what this infrastructure will be used for. Used to provide safer defaults and stronger privacy settings, age awareness can be part of a very protective framework. But used to deny account access, it becomes something very different.

Now without getting too in the weeds, I wanna take a moment to discuss why for LGBTQ plus youth, account based access and personalization specifically matter. A read only Internet is not necessarily community. An account is how a young person finds, builds, and maintains an experience that changes with them and their growing needs. An account is part of our infrastructure of digital belonging.

So when a policy says a young person may view some public information, but may not create or maintain an account, that distinction may make sense on paper, but does not reflect how LGBTQ plus youth actually use these spaces.

It also does not avoid our privacy problem. California's age signal law is not the same thing as requiring every user to upload a government ID or submit biometric data. That distinction matters, and I want to be very fair about it. But once age classification becomes the basis for account eligibility, we're watching a barrier of entry be erected, in front of every user. To identify who is 16, systems must also identify who is 16 or 17 and who is 18.

That makes a minimum age account restriction not only an access control policy for youth, but one we fear risks denial of access for everyone who wants to participate in covered spaces. Adults who rely on pseudonymity for safety, housing insecure or homeless youth, youth using shared devices, these are several of the many groups that can be affected. Meaningful enforcement is unlikely to remain neatly contained to just 16 users.

In our polling, seventy seven percent of LGBTQ plus adults said they were concerned about having to disclose personal or sensitive data to platforms to prove their identity or age. That number rises to 86% among transgender respondents.

Three fourths of LGBTQ plus adults are concerned about policies that make it harder for LGBTQ plus youth to access those spaces. Among transgender respondents, that rose to a whopping 94%. I also want to encourage caution around defining personalized feeds in a way that presumes harmful, addictive, or engagement maximizing features, and therefore applies to any system, where user generated content is recommended or prioritized, based on the the user's, behavior or interests.

A young person may not know the right term or the name of an organization or what kind of support does exist for them. Discovery matters because young people often begin with a feeling before they have the vocabulary for it.

So if the harm is manipulative design, regulate manipulative design. If the harm is harassment, require better harassment tools and enforcement. If the harm is data exploitation, restrict data collection and use. But if the remedy is to deny account based access, the policy has moved beyond safety standards into exclusion. That exclusion also creates its own risks.

Not only your platform's losing incentive to design with you safety in mind, but a young person who is barred from a mainstream platform is unlikely to simply stop seeking connection. They may move to a less visible and less moderated space. They may be less likely to report harassment or predatory content if they do not leave the original space, because reporting would reveal they were not supposed to be there in the first place.

And, ultimately, they are likely to lose some level of access to what safety tools or crisis path pathways do exist on better resource platforms and to nonprofit spaces. So, finally, I wanna end with two points.

One, digital policy cannot be divorced from the broader political environment we are living in. Across the country, LGBTQ plus books, school supports, identity documents, health resources, and, and transgender individuals themselves are being targeted. Even in California, a state with deep LGBTQ plus history and some of our strongest civil rights commitments, not every home or school or space is affirming. When offline environments broadly become less safe as they absolutely are right now, digital access becomes more important, certainly not less. And two, California's choices matter beyond California.

Your technology policy rarely stays here where California leads other states' watch. If California creates a model of youth safety built around age gated access and account exclusion, that model can and will be copied by states that do not share California's commitments to LGBTQ plus young people. In states where our expression is actively being framed as harmful to youth, a well intended architecture from here can be misapplied to exempt or even restrict LGBTQ plus resources and community.

California should not become the state that recognized LGBTQ plus youth were facing rising hostility everywhere and responded by narrowing one of the few pathways that they still have to support online. California can demand better from platforms without trying to make vulnerable young people disappear from them.

The evidence supports serious action. It does not require exclusion. Thank you so much, and I, I look forward to your questions.

Thank you so much.

Good afternoon. My name is Casey Pick. My pronouns are she and her. And I serve as the senior director of law and policy for The Trevor Project, the nation's leading provider of suicide prevention and crisis intervention services for LGBTQ plus youth. I'm glad for the opportunity to speak with you today on this topic.

The simple fact that this hearing is happening shows that people care about this community's mental health and well-being. And I'm here to say that that matters. LGBTQ plus youth are more than three times as likely to attempt suicide than their peers. To address this tragic reality, every day, The Trevor Project works to save young lives by connecting highly trained counselors with young people whenever they need support, twenty four seven via telephone, chat, or text.

Our counselors have heard from youth who have been subjected to the worst the Internet has to offer.

And from youth whose safety plan for the next time the world starts spinning out of control includes watching videos that make them laugh, relax, or feel less alone. What sets Trevor apart in this conversation and the reason why I'm here today is our mission. And our direct everyday practical experience with young people and the ways they look for support, community, and connection on and offline.

And from youth whose safety plan for the next time the world starts spinning out of control includes watching videos that make them laugh, relax, or feel less alone. What sets Trevor apart in this conversation and the reason why I'm here today is our mission. And our direct everyday practical experience with young people and the ways they look for support, community, and connection on and offline.

Much of my testimony will be drawn from years of national surveys we've conducted on LGBTQ plus youth mental health and well-being, each of which represents tens of thousands of young people between the ages of 13 and 24.

Much of my testimony will be drawn from years of national surveys we've conducted on LGBTQ plus youth mental health and well-being, each of which represents tens of thousands of young people between the ages of 13 and 24.

It likely won't surprise you at this point that the evidence consistently points to this issue being nuanced and complicated.

An overwhelming majority of LGBTQ plus youth tell us that social media has both positive and negative impacts on their mental health and well-being. 96% positive, 88% negative. For many of these young people, the Internet is both a risk and a lifeline. It can expose them to harassment, bullying, misinformation, and harmful content specifically targeting their sexual orientation and gender identity. The FBI has issued warnings about online sexual exploitation specifically targeting LGBTQ young youth and young people with mental health struggles.

And as an advocate in this space, I cannot turn away from the parents who crowded into a congressional hearing interrogating social media CEOs. Many of these parents who carried photographs of their children who died by suicide. These are serious concerns, and they merit a serious response. At the same time, as has been said, social media is often the first place LGBTQ plus youth discover language about who they are, see people like themselves reflected positively, or find peers who accept and affirm them.

As a participant in our recent sharing spaces roundtable conversation put it, quote, online community is where I first found my community.

That was where I could text my online friends and say, you guys, this is what just happened. I don't know what I'm supposed to do now. And they were the ones who definitely, in long run, not only saved my life, but made it better. That young person is not alone.

One of the most powerful and consistent findings we have in our research into protective factors is that spaces and communities where LGBTQ plus young people feel welcome and accepted can significantly lower their odds of considering and attempting suicide.

Notably for today's conversation, LGBTQ plus youth found supportive spaces online at a much higher rate, 77 of them, than all other spaces in their lives, including at school, fifty seven percent, or at home at just fifty two percent. This dynamic is even stronger for transgender youth. LGBTQ plus young people who felt safe and understood in at least one online space reported twenty percent lower odds of attempting suicide in the past year and fifteen percent lower odds of recent anxiety, particularly for LGBTQ plus youth of color.

So ensuring access to supportive online spaces is therefore particularly important right now as safe and affirming real life spaces from schools to LGBTQ community events to even the books and media that tell their stories are often being systematically targeted and taken away. For many LGBTQ plus youth today, the only place they can find acceptance is online.

And that's why for more than a decade, our suicide prevention work has included fostering peer support through Trevor Space, a moderated social networking platform that provides a welcoming environment for young people to learn more about their identities, find peer support, and make friends similar to a virtual community center for LGBTQ plus youth. From a mental health perspective, Trevor Space provides critical peer to peer connection and helps combat feelings of loneliness and isolation.

The virtual nature of this platform is important as it helps overcome barriers to in person support, such as a lack of transportation, experiences with discrimination, or physical threats, and offers a space where many feel safer and more comfortable expressing themselves compared to an in person environment as we heard earlier. One user described this impact by saying, quote, I'm really grateful for Trevor Space. I live in a small conservative town and don't have many like minded people I can talk to.

There are some LGBT events in the closest city, but they're all thirty to forty five minutes away, and I don't have my license. Having something like Trevor's space that is accessible is very helpful because having a sense of community and people who I can talk to is very important to me.

To understand how best to foster this kind of positive youth development, we've conducted extensive research with over 600 Trevorspace users, multiple LGBTQ youth advisory groups, all approved by an institutional review board for ethical practices, which has proven that regular use of TraverseBase leads to positive mental health outcomes. With access to TraverseBase, young people report having higher levels of developmental relationships, a sense of empowerment, support, community, positive values, social competencies, and social responsibility.

To another young Trevor Space user, this means being able to say, quote, I found some great friends.

I figured out my identity, and I've had an awesome time with the community. I also do my best to help to help people by responding to their posts about mental health or events or asks for advice. And in turn, I've gotten some really helpful advice and support.

What this tells us is that properly designed and moderated, online platforms have the ability to bring youth together, connect them to the support that they need, positively impact their mental health and well-being, and encourage them to actively want to help and support others. As proud as I am of Trevor for building this kind of community, we aren't, certainly shouldn't be, unique in safely providing young people important access to connection, information, and vital resources.

The benefits of online platforms designed to promote healthy development for marginalized communities, particularly LGBTQ plus young people, have been endorsed and promoted by the nation's top experts in mental welfare and development in child welfare and development. This includes former US surgeon general doctor Vivek Murthy, who made a point of highlighting these benefits in his 2023 advisory on social media and youth mental health.

Protecting youth mental health online is a complex and evolving topic, and there are no simple solutions to addressing the very real harms associated with social media. But that does not mean there are no solutions. Trevor is eager to work with all of you to share what we've learned from young people directly and help maximize social media's benefits while minimizing the very real harms.

Ultimately, social media is a tool and a form of communication. And at Trevor, we use it both to speak to the youth who need us and to hear what they have to say. No other mechanism is more effective at meeting young people where they are today. Our presence on all of the major platforms is a constant dialogue and a key part of how we are able to serve LGBTQ plus youth.

Sometimes, a single social media post from our feed or from public figures that we partner with can make a bad day better for a young person who desperately needs a reminder that they are seen and valued exactly as they are.

Our national surveys, which you've heard to which as you've heard today, provide unique insights into an understudied population, would not be possible without online recruitment. And when crisis strikes, social media is often the first place that young people go seeking help, including connecting with Trevor's twenty four seven crisis counselors when our contact information crosses their feed.

Especially now, when the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline's LGBTQ specialized services, 988 3, have been taken offline, we should think very carefully to avoid shutting the door on one of the only remaining ways vulnerable LGBTQ plus youth can find support when they need it. There's so much more I could say, and I truly hope that this is only the beginning of the conversation. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.

Thank you. And I can promise this is only the beginning of the conversation. We only have so much time today, but, this is important. Anyone? Remember more?

Yeah. Sure.

No. Thank you, madam chair. Thank you to our panelists for, you know, really, providing, I think, a range here of the lived experiences, you know, from, you know, one's own personal self, to to community to, you know, really appreciate the tech equity and and tech perspective as well that you're thinking about. I wanna start with Mari.

So, you know, I'm sitting here reflecting as well kind of, like, the ages that we've been through as a community and sort of how we find ourselves, find find information.

And, yeah, somebody who came of age in the eighties and nineties, there are bookstores, and there were alternative weekly papers. Right? And maybe those had resources in there. And I was lucky to be in urban environments, of course, that had resources to those.

And that was a way that, you know, I could I mean, I remember going to my first Lambda bookstore that had resources and very much felt like a safe space where I could start to breathe and, you know, be able to see things in in a very, very controlled and positive environment that I was looking for for exploration and for for just kinda, like, you know, self awareness.

And the same thing, I think, for a lot of the opportunities that we're seeing if you were fortunate even that era. So even still today, a lot of our college campuses don't have adequate resources for community. But I did. And and that was nice because I saw peers like me.

And, you know, if it came of age in, you know, the February or the you know, even the early twenty tens, you know, you would think about just the the basic Internet, which is still around today.

And, you know, that that, you know, expanded drastically, you know, the ability to find resources and to search and to and and to be able to find things like you. But, again, you know, we're sort of lacking that algorithmic thing that I think is starting to kinda creep into our lives and sort of distort experiences online and or AOL chat rooms, right, that were very intentional.

Not to say that there was another troll on there, right, that, like, we get in there and, you know you know, be harassed and it'd be difficult. But but by and large, generally, you're finding people like you. To your point, if you realized it was, like, you know, you know, what what what it is

you were looking for.

And I guess I I raise this because it is kind of a, you know, an open question, you know, if we didn't have access to social media and particularly those, you know, with algorithmic based platforms that are are creating this duopoly of, you know, benefits and harms. You know, put that aside. Like, how might you have, like, found community, found identity, found, you know, love and compassion and and and and and and a vision for yourself?

Right. Yeah. I I remember when I was a kid that I you know, San Francisco. Right? Like, I was just like I I had heard so much about, like, the the the mecca of, like, the queer experience, and I just remember thinking, like, all I need to do is get to San Francisco.

You know? Like, that was, like, something that was, like, in my head because I didn't have you know there there wasn't anywhere really for me to find the, like, physical, like, tangible things that would have, like, guided me towards, you know, my my identity. The amount of, you know, queer, like, you know, specific resource. Like, that was something that I remember, like, seeing bits and pieces of, you know, like, at you know, like you said, like, bookstores.

Like, I I remember, like, you know, I was volunteering at a library for a time, and I would get so excited when I saw, like, a single queer book.

I actually started to put them in all the displays because I was the one that was in charge of that. So I'd be like, alright. Here we go. Because, like, that was so and and that was, like, what my idea of know, the queer community was, like, limited to. And I very much felt, you know, that, like, that how do I wanna say it?

Like like, landlocked almost. You know, I was just like my the town that I live in, the fact that I didn't have, you know, my driver's license or access to a car, like, I couldn't get to the city where I would be able to find maybe the people or the community centers. It really was just more of, like, an isolated kind of learning about my identity in my in my process, which isn't to say that that was bad. You know?

Like, what I was able to find was immense.

And, you know, I the first non the the first, you know, the the first time I heard the word trans was not a good was not a good time, you know, for for me. But also, you know, I the first time that I really, like, explored, like, a trans narrative, it was in a movie that was centered on the trans experience that was bad. But it was still, you know, like, me seeing that, like, experience, like, reflected back.

And so having those those, like, little bits and pieces, like, they mattered, and also it still wasn't as impactful as it was when I started to interact, you know, one on one with the people who, who, yeah, could reflect that experience back to me.

But, you know, I do think that, like, again, it matters that we we continue to have, like, the representation of queer people in the media, especially now that, like, you know, these days, like, it is so much more expansive and so much broader, and, like, we are starting to see, like, different experiences being shared.

Like, you know, even earlier, we were talking about, like, how much, like, the acronym has expanded and how much we are getting to see, like, you know, all of these different experiences in spaces that aren't, you know, just isolated to social media. But I do think that, like, if I hadn't had the, like in the one to one, like, interaction, then it would have still felt, you know, pretty pretty isolated and pretty, separated out from, like, what the community experience was.

And what what was the one to one interactions, or what was the nature of that, like, online platform? Is it, you know, something along the lines of, you know, something very broad and algorithmic like a an Instagram or a or or an x or a Twitter account or what or or something specific?

I mean, I mostly used Tumblr and Instagram. And so those were the two that, you know, like, I could I remember, like, you know, similar to, like, how we've heard from some of the youth that, have spoken to to Trevor Project. Aye, would post about, like, experiences that I was having.

You know, that was something that I'd be like, you know, this just happened to me, you know, at school today. And through, like, you know, the algorithm, like, the community that I built, like, people would come to that and be like, I'm so sorry to hear that, like, you went through that. Like, you know and it became like I you know, in in online spaces, we call them mutuals. So I became like mutuals with people who, like, they followed me, I followed them.

We got to see and interact with each other.

And so that kind of became, like, that one to one piece of, like, oh, like, I know this person's, you know, handle, their, like, account name. I know, like, the story that they share online, the pieces of themselves that I get to see. And so it was, like, you know, a a direct, you know, interaction there.

And then I do think that, you know, there's there's, you know, not to this to the extent of, like, parasocial relationships, but then there were also the, like, the the the larger and, like, broader, like, experiences of, like, oh, well, I also know, like, advocates who share their stories online. You know?

Like, I know the people who who talk about their lived experiences, maybe not know them, but, like, I know the names and the narratives from the people who are, like, you know, standing on social media and, like, explaining their their life stories, like, through memoirs or through, you know, their, you know, TikToks or whatever it is. And so, yeah, all of that, like, really does, like, represent kind of, like, what those interactions, like, were or

Fantastic. And I'm wondering for from the tech perspective, I jot it down, and I really appreciate, I think, what your direction is, very succinctly that we are also debating too that, you know, what we need to be do is be be able to figure out how to regulate harms more precisely. And I guess from the kinda tech expert from from the techie angle Okay. You know, what what do you mean by that?

Like like, what are some ideas you have broadly about how how we could be thinking more precisely about regulation and legislation?

Yeah. It's a

I we very much believe that the strongest policy approaches are not necessarily the the broadest ones. Right? They are fairly precise. The what I will say, and I do I wanna point to a letter that LGBT tech sent earlier this year to members of the legislature. This is not a comprehensive list of of all the places we think California and other states could be involved, but I think it's a pretty good starting three.

The first being privacy preserving youth protections. So that can be in the vein of strong default safety settings, more robust reporting requirements, and in particular, limits on data collection, retention, and usage is a big part of that. The following two are, you know, more targeted platform accountability for specific risks.

This is not unfamiliar in this legislature as well as is trying to to look at them for some of the specific harms rather than the idea that the the platform itself or or the way it is being used is harmful inherently. And third, would would fall along the line of digital literacy and safety education.

And I know that's digital literacy is always being brought up, but there is a it is, for us, we never wanna have the conversation, about, you know, a young person just turning a certain age and then the entirety of these sort of social media platforms and the entirety of this digital world being available to them, without any recognition of how they should or could be navigating that in a way that protects themselves and those around them.

We spend a lot of time, trying to to teach young people to be good stewards of the physical world. We do not necessarily spend nearly as much on on trying to be good stewards in digital spaces as well. Like I said, I am that is a those are only three. I've got I wrote an expansive list earlier and and then decided that would keep us here all night.

But Yeah. Past that, I do wanna say is the I would be happy to have longer conversations about any of of those specific three or any sort of more targeted efforts towards social media platforms.

No. And we and we should. What though it might be your opinion of the focus that we're we're we're debating pointedly this year around algorithmic based platforms as opposed to other even social media platforms, online platforms that that that don't have that component.

Yeah. I and the conversation that I see typically in my mind kind of differentiates between what would be that sort of personalized or that algorithmic feed versus a chronological feed. And what I do wanna say is that we very much support chronological feeds as user options as, you know, as as the option to to choose and select, to have that chronological feed. I think if the the conversation, if the analysis sort of starts and ends with algorithms are harmful, algorithms are addictive

I think it is missing a lot of the nuance of the conversation. And and I do think the conversation needs a little bit more about how we are measuring the quantity of engagement that is happening with these feeds and with these algorithms versus the quality of it as well. It is as I said in my

testimony, all engagement is not bad engagement. Right? It is and whether it is something that a young person is searching for, whether it is something they stumble upon, you know, those can be tremendous identity forming experiences.

Yeah. And and that's, like, you know, when we heard our colleagues Bill Earlier in the committee hearing, you know, that's one thing that wasn't lost on me is, you're right, all engagement is a bad engagement. But do we recognize that, yeah, things are harmful and we should mitigate for that, but but they are harmful. And so we're willing to accept that because there's also a net positive benefit. And I know we'll come back to that maybe a little bit more in the second panel.

And, Martin, you had mentioned too that, like, you know, you had some of those negative experiences, but you knew to step back and you knew to get off. Like, that's great.

Right.

And and probably a lot of individuals are able to do that. A lot also find themselves sucked in for lack of a more or or or or eloquent term. How did you, like, sort of recognize, like, the warning signs and and that that should be your response?

Yeah. And, actually, that was something that I was thinking about a lot about, you know, as I was writing my testimony and reflecting on my past experiences because it wasn't every single experience that that felt you know, like I said, like, I learned to build that skill, like, over time. And so in the beginning, receiving hate did feel similarly, you know, devastating.

Definitely not to the extent that, you know, like, coming out to my parents was, but, like, it did feel just as big and scary, you know, as as some of the hate that I experienced in real life. And and especially when I did think about the ways that that could translate to, you know, like, there there were times when I received empty threats that didn't feel empty of, like, I'm gonna find out where you live, and I'm going to do xyz.

And that was that even just the, you know, concept. And this was before doxing became such a big, you know, and and a prevalent, like, experience that, you know, so many people have, you know, had to the point that we have legislation on it now. You know? And so, like, there you know, these things were still, like, big and hard and difficult.

And I think it was just, like, as I was, like, going through those experiences and as I had people who were backing me up and as I was beginning to see, like, you know, the community like, we talk a lot about, you know, like, what it means to, like, stand with community and, like, that's what I was starting to, like, really see with, you know, the people that I, like, you know, the mutuals I had, the people that I knew, like, how I how I watched other queer and trans people, like, react to hate.

Even just, like, memes and things, you know, that I was just like, okay. Like, you know, this is something like, a way that I can almost, like, you know, bring some kind of power to, you know, the situation. And like

I said, like, I I remember being so anxious, you know, in the beginning, like, when these things would happen. But then I did start to see, like, oh, this actually, like, is a contained, you know, like, experience. Like, this is something that, like, you know, I I don't have to engage with. There's actually an adage in in, you know, online spaces that, you know, I existed in that sort of, like, the the block button exists for a reason.

And so that is something that I truly, like, took to heart until I was able to be in a place where I was like, I, you know, I I like I mentioned, like, I build a platform because I was like, I wanna be an educator.

You know, like, I'm here because I want to to advocate. And so I started to, you know, educate people, like flip the script, that sort of thing. And, you know, like I mentioned, like, I know that, like, cyberbullying gets to a much bigger extent.

I know that, like, this isn't, you know my my experience might not be the, like, dominant experience, but also, like, in talking about, like, digital literacy and that sort of thing and, like, actually guiding youth into the ways that they can, you know, safely navigate these things.

I do think that that is an approach that is possible because then you can have people, you know, like me or people who have, like, had similar ways of, like, managing and regulating, like, actually, like, explain, like, this is how, you know, you can you can, you know, deal with hate and and regulate through hate and also, like, not put yourself, like, in the position of, like, actively, like, digesting that harm.

Yeah. Thank you. And, Trevor Project, I'm so glad you're here as well as one of our, you know, eminent, organizations nationally to be able to, highlight, the the good work that you do to engage with LGBTQ youth and, kinda help them and and be a resource, a critical life saving resource. I can't I can't we probably couldn't predict, how many lives have been saved because, you accessed and you do the work that you do.

And you mentioned as well your own platform, right, Trevorspace, which I wouldn't think would be sort of subject to what we're thinking of and and sort of, you know, any potential limitations, right, on on an algorithmic based kind of use.

But maybe I wanted to see if you knew from your kinda inputs or and and feel free to get back to committee. How many individuals may have found Trevor Project in the first place because they linked through from, you know, a an algorithmic based resource center. Right?

Like, you know, if you're on Instagram and all of a sudden things start to kind of realize that maybe you wanna know about Trevor How have you been able to track, like, you know, where you are able to find audiences and and and make them aware and and therefore, you know, make your resources useful, because of these?

Now I don't have the specific hard numbers on that. That is something that I would have to get back to with our technology team, but it is absolutely a very common story for us that people will, come across the Trevor Project's contact information mentioned, particularly in moments of crisis for our community, which, unfortunately, are all too tragic and all too common these days. Our community is part of how we learn to protect ourselves, to draw these boundaries, to do the kind of support work.

Will share out these kinds of resources. But I also really do value the possibility of the algorithm showing that content to folks who don't already who didn't click the follow button on the Trevor Project's page.

Right. Precisely because often the most vulnerable LGBTQ plus youth are the ones who are least likely to click that button out of their own sense of personal safety, out of their own sense of maybe clicking that button means admitting something about your identity that you're not ready to say yet. Yeah. A lot of the young folks who contact us are very much working through finding the words and finding the ability to own something.

So when you have a situation where you have a small community, which ultimately the LGBTQ plus community is, and a small amount of information in the world that is customized and made for them, the value of personalized feeds is that it helps to draw those two things together.

You're not relying on things falling to the, the common denominator. One comparison that I like to throw out there, it might seem a little bit silly, but the importance in terms of representation for a young lesbian to hear a love song about two women singing to each other. Today, you can find that kind of love song. It gets recommended to me on YouTube all of the time. You would never hear that on the radio on top 40.

And that's part of what we're looking for here, and I would never know to go looking for it, for these are often independent musicians. So that's sort of what we're talking about here when we say that these personalized feeds can be important. They absolutely are a double edged sword.

Another recent moment that where I would say algorithms went wrong, the shooting of a queer woman in Minneapolis Where because of algorithms on certain platforms, you had autoplayed video of that image over and over again, and our crisis counselors were hearing about it from queer young people. That was a moment where the algorithm went wrong.

And so I will simply say that algorithms are powerful. They share with us information that we could not find any other way. But when they go wrong, they can cause great harm, and I think that we can do a lot to make them better.

Thank you. And I I just thought by last note, you had mentioned as well, like, you know, the era that we're living in with this this cutting off of '98 and the the presser resources and, you know, be remiss to not acknowledge our colleague, Selena Gonzalez, who's leading on that effort to be able to not just through policy, be able to restore that here, but also a priority for our caucus to have the budget support here.

So at least within California, if we navigate our budget conversations well, that's something that can still be a resource. So thank you, madam chair.

Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you so much for that. Just to weigh in on how that touches on the algorithm question a little bit. Part of the value of 988 is that you have physical signs for it everywhere.

There you you can't cross a bridge without seeing a sign saying, if you're in crisis, call 988. That was why it was so important to the Trevor Project for us to be part of that national program and why it is so devastating when that went away. Because now we don't have LGBTQ specialized services at that national level that you can see in the physical world that way. For something like The Trevor Project, I don't have billboards. I have web ads.

Yeah. Thank you. And we just had a hearing yesterday on 98 rollout in California and the issue of the press three federal action came up. And I did wanna acknowledge what agency said was which was the partnership of Trevor Project to come in and at least train all of our mandated operators. And thank you so much for that because it isn't the same as calling the Trevor Project, but it's at least a step in the right direction to have the people answering the phones.

So thank you for doing that. But, yes, we all look forward to and I will say that, secretary Kennedy said in that congressional hearing, he's gonna bring it back. So let's speak it into existence. But, I wanted to make a point though that I think is interesting about what's coming up here with what Assemblymember Ward said, which is the difference between personalized feeds and addictive feeds.

And for those of us that remember the beginning of Facebook to Instagram today and the way the algorithms have evolved over time, that's the timeline was the beginning.

Yeah. Then there was algorithms that were personalized but not addictive, and now we have addictive and personalized. And so I actually think that it's an important distinction to make because I appreciate the comments being made about personalized feeds, but I think infinite scroll and and the one of

the things we also know is in order to get people's attention, the more incendiary the content, the more they will stay on the platform, which Aye, you know, my gut tells me is harmful to the LGBTQ plus community. And so you can do a personalization without that addiction.

And so I think that, again, these are the nuances that I really wanted to get at today because, many of the benefits you're talking about, I think, to the point you made, Shay, we can get at these really harmful pieces and still provide for a lot of the benefits that we've heard experienced. So I just wanted to make that point because I think those two things were crossing, and I think it's important that we distinguish between the two.

But I don't know if anyone wanted to add to what I just said.

Yeah. That is very much the factor here is at what point does a tool go wrong? Things like the autoplay on videos, that's what caused the situation with the constant playing of the Minneapolis shooting.

Yeah. That is very much the factor here is at what point does a tool go wrong? Things like the autoplay on videos, that's what caused the situation with the constant playing of the Minneapolis shooting.

An endless scroll, that is something that we have, significant research that suggests that any interruption is beneficial for letting folks get out of that zone. So there are definitely ways to, encourage better design on that front.

I think where there are real concerns and sometimes in the conversation more broadly is the discussion that a personalized feed is per se addictive. And that's what we're really trying to surface here. Right. It's what is that feed designed to do and how is it designed to operate?

Yeah.

Yeah. It's, I think, part of what we mean when we say being more precise in the legislating is figuring out what the features are and what the specific experiences are that are being had within those feeds that are negative and harmful to the individuals on them. Right? Versus the overarching assumption that personalized is bad generally.

And I've completely lost my train of thought for the end of the sentence, but yes.

You're okay. You're in. Yeah. Assemblymember, should I have a do you?

Thank you so much, excuse me, for being here today. And I'm happy to be sitting in on the committee. I'm not part of privacy, but I'm trying to be. So but this particularly is a really important issue to me as a mom.

And, I feel like we're being given a false choice here. And I think the the last point that was just made and to your point, Casey, about encouraging a better design, I think the challenge that we have as legislators is that I feel like we're kind of beyond encouragement. You know? It's not enough to encourage these social media companies to do the right thing.

They will tell us, you know, oh, we wanna be at the table, and we wanna be a part of the solution.

And then they to the Federal Government and lobby to not allow states to regulate them in any way. And so it that is all kind of feeling very hollow to me at this point. And I think, you know, to your point, madam chair, about what Facebook used to be, and I remember those days too, You know, it was something you could get on and off of very easily, and I don't stay up until 1AM doomscrolling.

So we know they can do it. And that's, I think, what's one of the most frustrating things about it, is we know they can do it.

They used to do it. It used to work better. Somehow, time and technological advancement has not made things better. It's made things worse for people, not for tech companies, I guess, and their profits.

And and for me, I feel like there's some like, it's so hard. I know assembly member Ward asked about, kind of trying to get you to think back to what do you think it would be like now to be able to find these spaces with the Internet and all these other things that are available? And I think it's hard to do that.

But, also with AI, it's so easy to be like, tell me all the resources that are available to me, and it'll come with an amazing report of all the things. And I know our next panel is gonna talk about what some of those spaces are.

But at the end of the day, literally, these tech companies could just fix this. They could just fix these addictive features. They could just stop doing it, and we would appreciate if they did. We could all just be done now. We could all just be done now.

Everyone goes home.

Right. Exactly. Our job is done. But, for me, beyond, increased anxiety, depression, all the mental health impacts that it's having access to inappropriate content, being groomed and targeted, and, all the sexual content, everything that happens beyond the bullying that happens. Right?

There's so much harmful content, and I know, I jotted down. I watched, two of the meta whistleblowers talking about some of the issues that they had raised, and they're talking about one of them who was a senior engineer said that 2 out of 10,000 people get help on the platform when they ask for help about something harmful happening. 2 out of 10,000. So we know they're not even trying. Like, that's just beyond even trying.

1 in 8, 13 to 15 year olds get unwanted sexual advances in the last week. 98% of them are from a stranger. Most safety tools don't work. Half had bad experiences in the last seven days. And, they're getting requests for nudes and all kinds of terrible things.

Right? I have a 13 year old, and so this is very scary for me as a parent, and I know we're all parents here. And so, we're trying to balance this for our kids, and there are other safe spaces, safer spaces. Right? I mean, I think the Trevor's space is an example of that.

And beyond that, and I think something that hasn't been a part of the conversation is now this emerging research that is talking about digital dementia, where we are actually seeing brains shrink. We are seeing attention spans lost. We are seeing, like, you haven't heard about that? Oh my gosh. It's freaking me out.

So, this generation is, for the first time, not smarter than the last. It is, this is something that is going to have societal and huge impacts. Right? And so this is the kind of stuff that we're trying to balance. And I completely hear your point about being more precise in the application.

And I think that's something that we should look at and consider for sure, because we do know what's the problem, and we want that to stop. But but I think, it's so frustrating that we're here at this moment trying to, like, figure out the balance of these things when you all are making incredibly important points and it's all true. Right?

It's all true and it's all real and it's very important and it's a matter of life and death for some folks. You know?

And so, I wonder if there are specific prescriptive things that you suggest. I know that question was asked, but really related to the addictive and, like, really harmful pieces of the tech that you think that really need to be laser focused on.

Yeah. So firstly, I wanna say, I know a lot of this conversation has drifted towards the idea of age eligibility around social media. I know that is a huge part of the conversation right now. Part of the reason we are so fearful of that is, we feel like that takes the accountability that should be on the platforms and asks our community to pay the tab instead.

And we are very concerned about that changing the rules of access for everybody relying on these platforms, but in particular, our youth.

So I wanted to make sure I said that at the beginning of your remarks. You also mentioned, the importance of having there are safe spaces like Trevor's Space is an incredible example. There are members of our community and I think young people generally looking for themselves, they deserve more than just formal resources. You know?

They deserve kind of, almost to choose your own adventure, a little bit, in a way.

I also came of age and came out on social media and in the age of social media. And it wasn't formal resources for me. It was algorithms. It was the first time I saw a video of a feminine lesbian. It was. There were that information that was provided to me in a way that impacted me greatly and that I wasn't even necessarily looking for.

So I just wanted to say, kind of, because those two were mentioned. On your question for sort of more specific prescriptions about how to handle this issue, there is a ground floor level here that I really enjoy talking about, which is that need for protections for everybody. And I know California has done incredible work in the space of of data privacy for Californians. We are crossing our fingers, every six months when it comes to the federal level on that.

But also kind of recognizing, what are the parts of this experience, that we are focusing in on young users, on minors, and needing to to improve that, that actually do need to be improved for everybody.

And we are talking about, for example, the data collection and use in ways that's very targeted. Right? The commercial use of that data to target individuals is something that should be for every adult. So I won't go deeper into that. Right?

But that's, I think, that is the first level here is saying, what is every user on these social media platforms missing in a safe experience? Building on top of that then is looking at the infrastructure that California has and is building, I think, especially with these age signals. Right? That is infrastructure that can be used to do, kind of specific improvements at that point, without the need for an age eligibility, an age ban, an age block.

That is very much a place we are concerned about.

One of the the conversations we have is around, when it comes to young users is around the reduction of contact with adult users on a platform. That is something that can happen once you have age signaling. That as a specific harm that can be addressed. So why again, for fear of continuing to talk far too much. I think that is one great example.

Is, the reduction of contact there? Safety by default for users who you know, where the age signal is identifying them, of a certain age, as well as requirements for platform tools to be provided to them as they are aging into 16, 17, and especially 18 when the wild, wild west is now all there in front of them. Thank you.

And I'll say that Roblox, which now does age verification differently, and we one of the questions we asked them was, are you now saying that, eight year olds can't play with adults? And the answer was no. So to your point, it is something that once they're doing it, they can absolutely say, okay. This Roblox game is for 13. We're not gonna let them play with adults, but it's a choice that without some policy isn't happening.

Encouragement.

Sorry. You were gonna say.

Certainly. I mean, in terms of some of the things that can be done, I think in terms of principles. So, for young people, giving them more agency and control over their experience online and having that control be meaningful. You called it out on some of the platforms receiving complaints of harmful content and then not actually taking action. That's a problem, and that's distinctly fixable.

When we're talking about things like the algorithm, if you have the ability to say, I am not interested in, for example, this weight loss content. If you click that and you're still getting constant ads for weight loss medications, that means that there's a failure at the platform level that, honestly, they should be able to be held accountable for. Something that I look at just in terms of where I share your frustration that these platforms have a tremendous amount of power and are abdicating responsibility.

We saw significant changes recently in the moderation standards of certain platforms that backed off their responsibility specifically to LGBTQ, users, further opening the door to hateful content. That's a failure on their part, and that contributes to the toxic environment that we're in.

So I have no problem with holding platforms accountable for the protective and safety measures that they promise on those. And we can make these algorithms better utilizing the technology that we have.

Yeah.

And it was actually, to that point, Meta, within the past year, greatly reduced their protections against hate speech and their community guidelines. And it was so bad that, I know so many queer and trans people who actually got off of Instagram and Facebook because they were like, I don't wanna be on a platform that doesn't protect my community.

And I think what's really interesting is that it wasn't the algorithm that drove them away. It wasn't the community itself. It was the platform making these rules, making these changes.

And for all intents and purposes, explicitly saying, yeah, we don't really care enough about this community to be putting in the work. Like you said, I think it was, what, 2 out of 10,000? Where I have, like I said, I run the social media for a nonprofit that works with trans youth. And so I am constantly blocking, reporting comments and that kind of thing.

So, I don't in the three years that I have been doing this work, I've never once had Meta back up the reporting. And so, I think that people want the community and the exploration and all of the benefits that social media offers.

And it's like you said, the failure of the platform. You know, that really is, where I think that, that's the problem we need to be addressing, first and foremost. And you're right. Encouragement isn't enough. And it does just feel like at this point, we're shifting to being like, Well we're seeing that the platform isn't doing this thing. So now we're going to lean on the people who are already vulnerable, who can't do anything about all of these changes that are being made. And so when I think about things like, the fact that age verification could very well include government IDs and, facial data. I don't want Meta to have that.

As somebody who doesn't even trust Meta when I get hate comments on my post, I'm not compelled to be here as somebody who is an adult and should have access to the spaces that I wanna have access to like that. And so, I think it really is just all part of such a broad conversation.

And then I do think is why being so precise about the way that we're approaching it matters.

Thank you. And just one more quick question. So on the Trevor Project, I know you offer a lot of different services, resources. Are you finding, and I don't know if you know this off the top of your head, but are there certain services that folks in the LGBTQ community are gravitating towards more than others? I'm hearing just, anecdotally, because we've been working on some tech mental health stuff in the budget subcommittee.

And I was talking with schools in my district, and people were talking about how kids are wanting to go more to on person and face to face experiences rather than online spaces. And so I don't know if you're seeing kind of, the in person crisis support be more used than other online options or how that's working?

So our crisis services, take the phone of 24/7 contact with the trained counselors via telephone, chat, or text platforms. And we also have TraverseBase for that peer support social networking aspect of it. I can tell you that the text based platforms are very popular, particularly with younger audiences for various different reasons. In some ways, they're a little more just, text and tech native to that extent. It is also, frankly, easier for privacy purposes.

If you are at home having a spoken phone call, it can be hard to find the privacy to have that kind of conversation.

I will absolutely say that there is a desire, not just among LGBT young people, but young folks in general for offline resources as well. But the very real truth is many of those kinds of in person connection spaces have been erased. They have shrunk. Access to them is harder. The assemblyman was talking about, LGBTQ bookstores.

Those have gone out of business. And that's even leaving aside the reality that we know that things like, something as innocent as drag queen story hour is targeted for protests at a library. So it is a scary thing to seek out community in person today as an LGBTQ plus young person. So having, from my perspective, more is more.

Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, that's part of where you run into these challenges. You will have some You will have some accounts with millions of followers that are driving anti LGBTQ misinformation. Right. And that is something, when that drives engagement, when that gets amplified, that's a problem I would love to see solved.

Facilitated, I might add, is by social media. Yeah. I mean, the hate and jumping in on drag queen story hour, right? It's well organized by extremist forces.

Thank you so much. I mean, I think this is such an important part of the conversation, that we need to be having and in considerations as we're moving forward with policy, in the legislature. So really appreciate you being here and sharing your insights.

Thanks, Sonora.

Yeah. Thank you all, and all of the perspectives are so critical. I think I read that Trevor's space has direct connection from a social media space. Yes.

From Trevor's space to your crisis counselor. So if I'm in Trevor's base and I need a crisis counselor. I will note that a couple years ago when I was working on the 988 rollout, one of our largest crisis 988 call centers offered to serve chat in one of our, direct messaging in one of our social media platforms. And I thought that was an amazing thing.

What if somebody said something online that triggered a pop up that said, do you need to talk to someone?

And then our trained 988 counselors were there to direct message with the youth in crisis, which is basically what I think you're doing for your community. They declined our 998 call center to do that. So it's, like, to the point that you made, the platforms are making choices that are not only harming, but not even offering the supports that we want to support. So it's just been, really sad, I sat on this committee for eight years.

It's been a sad eight years to watch this all go down.

So I think I understand the need that you guys are expressing for someone to have a traditional personalized feed that maybe even points them to the more, tailored spaces that are created for LGBTQ young people. I wanted to talk a little bit though about how your online space is curated.

So, you know, some of the features that you've heard us express concern about infinite scroll, I would say, addictive and predatory algorithms. So feeding them more hateful content or incendiary content. You know, what is and I should go on your online space, and I will do that. I was thinking that while I was sitting here.

But can you talk a little bit about sort of how you your space is designed?

Certainly. So Trevor Space is a nonprofit organization. This is one program that we operate, and it is a fairly simple platform. Young people between the ages of 13 and 24 are able to, make an account where they can then, participate in forums, just ongoing conversations. And those forums are publicly visible.

They range a wide range of topics. Everything from the new Taylor Swift album to a forum to talk about pronouns and names that you might be thinking about. So, folks are able to have those kinds of communication. There are also clubs where you just have, groups of young folks who have similar interests who are able to, talk to each other, share stories. What you don't see on TrevorSpace is an endless scroll.

You do not see autoplay of videos. You do see the ability to engage in reactions and respond to user content, a preset, reaction that probably speaks to just the mental health focus of Trevor's space is, an ouch button. Something that indicates of, oh, that sounds like that hurts and I feel for you. So you do get that kind of engagement and interaction. Young people are able to have, direct messages to continue that conversation.

All of this is in an environment that has, significant moderation. So we have moderators who are very much involved. And part of what we have was talking about the positive youth development research where engagement with Traverse Space actually has positive outcomes, including things like social skills, which honestly for a lot of our young folks today is something that post pandemic is a struggle.

Our terms of service, our guidelines, these social norms that are built on TrevorSpace are geared towards emotional regulation and, conflict resolution and communicating clearly. This is the sort of thing, it's not something that's necessarily even imposed top down, from Trevor.

This is something that is built up from the users themselves, from our youth advisory communities. But it's something that I think even in my storytelling of we learn how to take care of each other, and that's a value that is permeated through a space like Trevor's space, where priority one for us is safety, not just physical, but emotional and mental.

Thank you. And I think it really hits the point. The reason I want to ask that question is, we often say here in this committee, online spaces aren't inherently bad. Right? It's I think there's there are some economic forces that are causing choices that are bad, but it's not the space itself.

And I think, that's a perfect example of a intentionally designed space that is not creating the harms that we see in other spaces. So I really appreciate you doing that work. And I think you heard many of us say, you know, I couldn't agree more that I think Maddy said it first. The Trevor space is saving lives. And, so we're really grateful for your work and all of you.

And I just wanna reiterate my gratitude, Maddy, for you telling your personal story. That's not always easy in a space like this, but it is really important for us to hear that and for us to understand, and put a face and a real story to what it is we're debating every day in this room. So I just wanna thank you for that, and thank you all for being here. And let's I think with that, we'll move to panel two. So thank you, guys.

Thank you.

So our second panel is on LGBTQ plus specific online resources and research on LGBTQ plus youth and social media. We have Supreet Mann, doctor Supreet Mann, director of research for Common Sense Media, doctor Sean Young, UC Irvine, Department of Emergency Medicine Informatics, and executive director of the UC Institute for Prediction Technology. Who even knew we had an institute for prediction technology? Doctor Amy Green, head of research for HopeLab, and lastly, Nikki Bath, CEO of LGBTQ plus Health Australia.

I am.

And are you the only one here in person this?

Doctor Mann?

mhm

I got it right that time, doctor Mann. So should we start with doctor Mann, and then we'll move to the virtual space? Perfect. Doctor Mann, you're up.

Great. Thank you so much first, to the committee for the opportunity to testify today, and also thank you to the panelists from that first panel for providing their lived experiences and the context. I think that's so important. It helps to really highlight the importance of the conversation we're having today. So, that was great.

My name is doctor Supreet Mann. I am I use she/her pronouns, and I'm director of research at Common Sense Media. We're a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping families navigate media and technology, and we've been researching young people's digital lives and their experiences with technology for over two decades. For LGBTQ plus young people, social media has the potential to both help and hurt. It is truly a double edged sword, one that can be a source of community and affirmation while also being a space of disproportionate harm.

That duality is really central to what I wanna share today. Before diving into the possible harms and benefits of social media on LGBTQ plus youth, I want us to better understand who they are when they arrive at these platforms. In a 2024 common sense media survey conducted alongside our partners at Hopelab, we surveyed over 1,200 young people ages 14 to 22 with oversamples of LGBTQ plus youth to learn more about their experiences in online spaces.

Nearly half of the LGBTQ plus young people in our survey reported moderate to severe depressive symptoms compared to a quarter of the non LGBTQ plus peers. So roughly twice the rate of depressive symptoms for the LGBTQ plus youth.

The same study found that youth with depressive symptoms were more vulnerable overall to social media harms. So they're more likely to report feelings of social comparison in these online spaces, more likely to be exposed to harmful content, and also more likely to engage in compulsive usage patterns.

64% of youth with these depressive symptoms say they feel other people's lives are better than their own when they're using social media and in these online spaces compared to 38% of those with no depressive symptoms. This background of higher depressive symptomatology and the potential limitation for in person community suggests that LGBTQ plus youth may be impacted by social media in a really unique way. And indeed, our research findings largely support the same.

To sort of set the stage for social media usage broadly, a 2021 research report that was conducted by us at Common Sense Media found that teens spend more than 8 and a half hours a day using screen media for non school purposes, and tweens, so ages eight to 12, spend more than five and a half hours a day using media for non school purposes.

When it comes to online video sites like YouTube and TikTok and more traditional social media sites like Instagram and Snapchat, both teens and tweens are spending a lot of time on these online platforms. Well over half of the teens and tweens in that survey were watching online videos on sites like YouTube and TikTok every single day, and more than 6 in 10 teens were using traditional social media platforms regularly.

And traditional social media use, like, Snapchat, Instagram, is also growing amongst eight to 12 year olds as well, with almost 40% of tweens in our survey reporting having ever used those sites. So what do we know?

We know that kids across the board are using social media a whole lot, and we know that for LGBTQ plus youth, they are coming to these platforms with potentially higher depressive symptomatology. So when we take all of those things together and we look at the potential for benefits and harms from these social media sites, there are clear positives and potential negatives that really do emerge.

On the positive side, about three quarters of LGBTQ plus social media users say that these platforms are important in helping them feel less alone, and 89% of LGBTQ plus youth encounter comments that celebrate their queer identities, with very similar percentages encountering content that affirms intersectional identities and body positive content. So these communities may offer really unique connection and affirmation. But as I stated in the beginning, this is truly a double edged sword.

Three quarters of LGBTQ plus youth also encounter homophobic comments at least with some regularity, and similar percentages report encountering transphobic comments. And many queer youth, 72% in our study, also feel that public posting would expose them to harassment, suggesting that these spaces may not be promoting expression for those vulnerable young people who may instead be choosing self censorship as a way to protect themselves. And platforms are often just not doing enough to protect our vulnerable youth.

A recent research report released by GLAAD, a nonprofit that's focused on LGBTQ advocacy, found that anti LGBTQ rhetoric and disinformation can translate to offline harms and that platforms are largely failing to mitigate this harmful content that violates their own policies. So, not only are these platforms failing to moderate harmful anti LGBTQ material that violates their policies, they're also frequently suppressing or blocking legitimate LGBTQ expression.

So this includes wrongful takedown of LGBTQ accounts and creators, mislabeling LGBTQ content as adult or explicit, and other kinds of suppression of LGBTQ voices. Not only do these spaces present harm potentially to LGBTQ plus young people, but the potential benefits that they could be reaping in these spaces may not be amplified in the ways that they should because of the design of these platforms and the limitations that are placed on LGBTQ plus expression.

Across our research, the most consistent binding is that young people who stand to gain the most from social media may be disproportionately at risk due to the harmful elements of media design. And when that harm includes hateful and possibly life threatening content, this is an urgent tension that really needs to be considered. Let me close with what I think is the most important thing that this committee should take from our research and from my testimony.

LGBTQ plus youth arrive at social media with unique vulnerabilities that really need to be considered. They may be carrying a greater depressive burden than their peers and a lack of in person community support. But when they arrive in these online spaces, they encounter homophobic and transphobic content at high rates, and many of them cannot openly express themselves without perceived risk. Platforms that are supposed to have built in protections are often not moderating harmful content and instead allowing hate speech to flourish while suppressing LGBTQ plus expression.

Certainly, some LGBTQ plus youth find community and affirmation online, and that absolutely matters.

But our data shows that the benefits that they find may be hard to access, more precarious, and less protected than they should be. This same space may pose serious risks to LGBTQ plus youth due to the nature of the design. The young people who have the most to gain from social media are also far too often the ones who are most exposed to its harms. Thank you.

Thank you. And now we will turn to doctor Young, who I think we have online. Doctor Young, are you there?

Yes. I am here.

Okay. We see you and hear you.

You can see me. Can you hear me? Perfect. Alright. I think there was an echo for a second.

Is that going? Yes. Alright. Well, good afternoon, chair, members of the committee, and caucus. Thank you for those needs in clinic, schools, or families.

For some young people, social media is not only entertainment. It's one of the few places where they can ask questions or find people who understand their experiences. At the same time, online spaces can clearly become risk environments.

In an early study of about a 120 social media registered men who have sex with men, most of whom were Latino or Black African American, we found that meeting partners through online social media sites was associated with several sexual risk behaviors, including exchanging sex for food, drugs, or a place to stay, and having more new sexual partners. Now I would not interpret that as proof that social media causes risk itself, but it does show that digital environments can shape behavior, especially for vulnerable populations.

Work on cyberbullying points to a similar conclusion. In our view of social media and cyberbullying, we describe cyberbullying as a public health concern associated with mental and behavioral health issues and increased suicide risk. We also noted that social media can provide a platform for using private information against others. That's especially important for LGBTQ youth. Privacy identity and safety are deeply connected.

A harmful interaction online may not only be embarrassing or upsetting. It may expose identity, increase stigma, or make a young person less willing to seek help. We also learned in social media monitoring study among college students that online distress can be visible but difficult to act on responsibly. Our team unexpectedly identified a student expressing suicidal thoughts on X.

We tried to connect the student to psychological services at the university but encountered barriers, including fake online activity and uncertainty about how institutions should respond to risk detected through social media.

The lesson is that seeing risk is not enough. Platform schools, researchers, and health systems need clear protocols, trained support, privacy, safeguards, and referral pathways. Now the other side of my research is that online communities can be intentionally structured to improve health behavior.

In a mixed method study using social media groups for HIV education and prevention among, again, primarily Black and Latino men who have sex with men, participants voluntarily engaged in about 500 conversations over twelve weeks on the online community we created for them.

They discussed HIV prevention and testing, knowledge, stigma, advocacy, MSM culture.

And participants who posted about HIV and STI prevention and testing had substantially higher odds of requesting a home based HIV self testing kit and adjusted odds of eleven. In a more recent California based randomized controlled trial, we enrolled 900 Los Angeles based Black and Latino men who have sex with men in a twelve week peer led online community intervention.

Compared to the control condition, participants, who belong to a social media community without peers, the intervention participants were more likely to report recent HIV self testing and reduced substance use. Retention, staying in the study was greater than 93%, which is pretty high, and we attribute that to the involvement of peers in social media.

In another study, we found that peer led online communities can increase community cohesion and that these network changes, becoming friends with another appeared associated with positive health behaviors like increased HIV prevention and testing.

In a mental health trial, the same peer led online community type intervention increased requests for anxiety resources and self coping. I wanna be careful about generalizing. For these studies, they were conducted not among minors, and most were not specifically studies of LGBTQ youth, but they show an important behavioral principle. And that's online peer environments can be designed to improve health and well-being.

They can be structured around trust, support, stigma reduction, health information, and help seeking, or they can be left to systems optimized mainly for attention and engagement.

Now so what does this mean for California policy? As California has already moved beyond simple screen type messaging by focusing on design features, including personalized speeds, notifications, like counts, age, and I think that's an important direction. And my recommendations are related to what comes next. So first, I think we need to measure whether youth become safer, not only whether access declines.

If a policy reduces account access, but youth move to private accounts, anonymous spaces, gaming communities, VPNs, shared devices, or newer platforms with less moderation, less visibility, then the policy may displace harm rather than reduce it.

This is particularly important for LGBTQ+ youth who may lose access to affirming communities while still being exposed to risk elsewhere. Related to that, one practical recommendation is data transparency. Platforms should not necessarily be treated as responsible for every harm that occurs online, but they should be responsible for measuring and reporting safety relevant data.

Right now, much of what we need to know, things like exposure to harassment, reporting rates, response times, recommendation pathways, use of safety tools, movement to less moderated spaces, things that we've just been discussing, much of that information is held privately by platforms. Without privacy protective independently auditable data, California cannot know whether youth safety policies are reducing harm or simply moving it somewhere else.

Second, let's distinguish passive access to information from interactive access to community. A young person may still be able to view, coming out video or read information without an account, but viewing content is not the same as asking questions, joining a moderated group, receiving peer support, or building an affirming community. For many LGBTQ youth, the interactive component may be what matters most. Finally, let's distinguish engagement maximizing systems from intentionally moderated peer support environments.

A personalized feed optimized to keep a teenager scrolling is different from a moderated community designed to provide support, reduce stigma, connect youth to resources, and respond to risk, and policy should recognize that difference.

So in closing, my overall recommendation would be a harm reduction approach. For LGBTQ youth, social media can be a source of harm, but it can also be a source of support. The most effective policies will not treat social media as a single exposure. They'll ask whether the online environments youth use are safe, supportive, accountable, and designed to reduce harm. The goal should not be simply to make youth less visible online.

The goal should be to make youth safer. Alright. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your questions and future discussions.

Thank you. I liked that closing. Don't make them less as we'll make them safer. Take that with us.

We're going to Doctor Green next, Head of Research for HopeLab. Thank you, Doctor Young.

Perfect. Thank you all for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Amy Green. I'm a clinical psychologist focused on teens and young adults. I began my career at UC San Diego, and I now live in Los Angeles.

I serve as the Head of Research at HopeLab which is a Bay Area based nonprofit that works to improve young people's mental health by supporting research and investing directly in young people and the ideas and tools that help them thrive. A lot of our work is really centered on creating and learning from young people. And so really having them in the room and in this space to drive the work that we do.

When we talk about social media and LGBT youth mental health, as I think we've heard many times today, we have to hold two realities at once. The platforms can expose young people to real harm, and they also provide meaningful, sometimes lifesaving support.

The reality is clear in our research. You heard from a little bit about some of the research that HopeLab and Common Sense Media did together in 2024 where three quarters of LGBTQ+ young people said they see homophobic and transphobic comments on social media.

We also followed up with a 2025 national survey that focused just on LGBTQ+ young people, around 1,400 of them with the Born This Way Foundation, and more than 1 in 3 LGBTQ+ young people experienced bullying or teasing online in the past year due to their identity.

Yet in those same exact studies, 74% said social media is important for helping them feel less alone and online spaces were rated as significantly kinder, safer, and more supportive for LGBTQ young people than their in person spaces. As one example here, 9%, only 9% less than 1 in 10 LGBTQ+ young people said they felt very safe being LGBTQ+ in person spaces.

And this is data from 2025 that was published, conducted with data from 2024 to '25. So only like, less than 1 in 10 feels very safe being LGBTQ+ in person spaces. Nearly half say online. So while it's not a safe place, I think we have to remember that the in person spaces also are not safe spaces. As one young person said, being online gives me at least physical protection to be who I am.

People can be brutal online, but those are just words on a screen. A screen can't beat me up. And that tension captures the reality for many LGBTQ+ young people. The same spaces that expose them to the harm are the ones where they find connection and support they're missing offline. And against this backdrop, inconsistent with decades of research that predates social media, LGBTQ+ young people are struggling with their mental health.

They consistently report higher levels of loneliness, depressive symptoms, and barriers to accessing mental health resources compared to their peers. In our most recent national poll, about 6 in 10 LGBTQ+ young people rated their mental health as fair or poor. So that's most. And when asked what was negatively affecting their mental health, more than half identified issues like family challenges, loneliness, school issues, and dealing with Homophobia and Transphobia as major sources of strain.

For these young people social media actually fell lower on the list with about 1 in 3 saying that it negatively affected their mental health.

And in that context, online spaces, especially those designed with safety in mind such as Trevor Space, become a critical source of support, connection, and access to mental health resources that they can't easily find online.

Doctor Green, I don't know if it's intentional but your video was cut. Oh, there we go.

I don't know how that happened. There we go. I appreciate that. So many LGBTQ+ young people, particularly those in unsupportive homes or communities are not using social media passively.

They're turning to it deliberately to find different communities to access support they can't find offline. In our study with Born This Way Foundation, online friends were rated as twice as likely to provide high levels of social support as their family. 63% who had online friends that they felt would support them versus 33% who had family who would support them. Many emphasized that the friendships had kept them alive and given them a place to be their true selves.

One of the teens in our study said, throughout my entire life, I've been bullied relentlessly.

However, when I'm online, I find that it's easier to make friends. It's the friends I've made online that have kept me alive all these years. And so taken together, the research tells us three key things. LGBTQ+ young people continue to experience high rates of anxiety, depression, and loneliness. For many of them, social media and online friends are a core source of support, safety, and hope for them.

And yet the same platforms that help them cope also expose them to harassment and hateful content. And the dual reality experience has a lot of important implications for how we think about their well-being and policies that will affect their access to online spaces. First, as I think we've heard from others today, broad one size fits all solutions carry a real risk of unintended consequences.

Limiting access to online spaces may reduce exposure to harmful content but it can also reduce access to affirming communities and mental health resources. And for LGBTQ+ young people who lack in person support, they can deepen the isolation and remove one of the only places where they feel safe.

Second, focusing only on how much time young people spend online isn't enough. Our research shows that young people aren't passive consumers. They're actively shaping their online environments by curating their feeds, seeking out supportive spaces, and avoiding harmful content when they can, but they're doing it within systems that are not designed with their well-being in mind.

And in that context, it's reasonable to hold tech companies accountable for how their platforms affect users' safety and mental health, particularly when risks are tied so closely to design decisions like recommendation systems that favor emotionally charged content and features that encourage continuous scrolling.

Third, young people are not a monolith and LGBTQ+ young people in particular have distinct needs and vulnerabilities.

So policies need to account for differences in home environments, identity development, and access to offline support rather than assuming a single approach will work for all young people. And finally, I want to emphasize the importance of including LGBTQ+ young people in the development of solutions. They have direct insight into how these platforms function in their lives including both the risks and the benefits.

As I mentioned one of the core features of our work at Hope Lab is co creating with young people including in our research. It's something I hadn't been able to do as much throughout my academic career and it's especially important for topics like social media.

I think I'm probably dating myself that I'm likely to be around the age of many of you here and our realities of growing up and what technology was like is so different and I cannot when I do this work rely on my own knowledge or lived experience as an LGBTQ+ young person. Things are so different now.

There have been many times where my prior assumptions that I've gotten with were way off and it has been incredibly humbling to spend so much time over the past few years in spaces talking to LGBTQ+ young people about their experiences and about the world that they're experiencing today. So if there's one takeaway I'd offer it's for LGBTQ+ young people.

The question is not whether it's good or bad it's how we can thoughtfully reduce the risks while preserving the connections and the resources that many young people rely on and that in many ways as you've heard from places like Trevor Space, help them survive.

And that requires a grounding in evidence and careful attention to unintended consequences, but it's both possible and necessary. And so I thank you all and look forward to questions.

Thank you, Doctor Green. And we need to get those youth involved in policy and advocacy so they can be in our space as well. So

Love that.

I give you that pitch for HopeLab's new agenda.

And lastly, we have Nicky Bath, the Chief Executive Officer for LGBTIQ+ Health Australia. Nicky?

There we go.

We can hear you, but I don't know if your camera's on.

Yep.

There we go. Thank you, Nikki.

Yep. My camera's on. Can you see me?

We can see you and hear you when you're ready.

Fantastic. I'm a bit far away. So, thank you so much for welcoming me to the California State Assembly Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee regarding the impact of social media on LGBTQ young, plus young people. So, yes, I'm Nikki Bath. I'm the CEO of LGBTIQ+ Health Australia

I use she/her pronouns, and I'm joining you from the unseated lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation and pay respects to elders past and present. So LGBTIQ+ Health Australia or LHA as we're fondly known is the national people for LGBTQ+ plus health and well-being, and we were founded in 2010. We represent our members, organizations and individuals delivering health programs, services and research for LGBTIQ+ people across Australia.

Our members bring expertise and lived experience, and together we act as a trusted voice to government. Our work is guided by four core pillars being policy health and well-being sector capacity deliver a cure for Australia's national LGBTIQ+ telework peer support and referral service.

I don't know if I've disappeared again, have I?

Can you still hear me?

We can hear you. Yeah. And your actually, your audio got better when your camera went off, so you may wanna keep the camera off just for purposes of us hearing you.

I'll turn it off. Let's see if that's better. Apologies.

Yeah. You sound good now.

Okay. Great. So I think I got as far as We Deliver Q Life, which is Australia's national anonymous and free LGBTQ plus tele-web peer and support and referral service, which is, similar in content and approach to the Trevor Project. As a government funded healthpeak organization, our role is to ensure the voices and experiences of our members and LGBTQ plus people inform health and well-being policy decisions, and we are a trusted conduit between governments and communities. So there's absolute agreement that we must protect young people online.

The key question is whether restricting access to social media as is the case here in Australia reduces harm or if unintentionally increases risk for those who rely on online spaces for safety, connection, and support. LHA fully supports taking action to increase the safety of children and young people as long as the action taken reduces harm. So Australia strengthened its online safety framework through the Online Safety Act 2021 and amendments in 2024.

So the amendments in 2024 require age restricted plat restricted platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent Australians and 16 from creating or maintaining accounts with implementation commencing on the 12/10/2025 and significant penalties for noncompliance. I will note that having this policy go live so close to Christmas placed great strain on organisations and communities.

Preparation for these changes relied heavily on relationships between government, regulators and community organisations. LGBTQ plus community controlled organisations play a unique role in building trust and connecting marginalized young people to support. And as a peak body, LHA acted as a conduit between E-safety and the Australian government and our members. In 2024, we joined with other leading mental health organizations in expressing concern that a blanket social media ban could cut young people off from vital support and expose them to new risks.

In 2025, we formally responded to the amendment highlighting that LGBTQ plus young people often rely on social media for connection to affirm communities that may not exist offline.

We participated in a roundtable hosted by the E-safety Commissioner, Minister for Communications, and the Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention. And this is when we were heading towards the implementation of the restrictions to explore what could be enacted to reduce impact. We participate in post implementation, monitoring, working led and working group led by the minister of health office, and these mechanisms have worked as we have good partnerships with government and government agencies.

We also worked with Esafety advising on resources that they developed specifically for LGBTQ plus young people in regards to the social media restrictions. In our engagements, we noted that broad restrictions are a blunt instrument, that harm is better addressed through targeted regulation, education, and digital resilience, and that young people are highly likely to find workarounds.

We also advised that services and health campaigns would struggle to reach their audiences, and we recommended, as I've said, a more balanced approach. At the same time, the community controlled LGBTQ plus sector worked to mitigate impacts by developing alternative resources and guidance, including community education on safer online spaces and the limitations and risks to the use of AI as a core tool. I'd be very happy to make our written submissions available to you.

Since implementation, millions of 16 year old accounts have been removed from platforms, and it's important to note that this does not necessarily mean reduced access to social media accounts by people under 16. Multiple accounts are common, and many young people have had work arounds prior to the restrictions.

The emerging picture is mixed and still evolving. We are only five months into the implementation. There has not been a noticeable increase in help seeking behavior through major national services, which is what we expected beyond an initial spike in contacts about the ban as we got closer to the day of implementation. We are instead seeing what we think is behavioural displacement rather than risk reduction.

Anecdotally, we know that young people are using alternative platforms, circumventing age verification, and moving into less visible circumventing age verification, and moving into less visible and less regulated spaces.

We're also hearing about an emerging reliance on AI tools for information and support. And while these tools can be useful, they cannot replace human connection and have their own risks. The feedback from our member organizing organizations confirm these trends. Young people are indeed finding practical ways around the restrictions, including using someone else's account, misrepresenting their age, and using VPNs. At the same time, services are working to find ways of reaching young people in new ways, and this is placing pressure on organizations with already limited resources.

The key concern is that while policies may be applied equally, their impacts are not equal. LGBTI young people, particularly those without family support, supportive schools are more likely to rely on online spaces for safety and connection, and losing access can increase isolation, vulnerability, and suicidal ideation and attempts. And it was very interesting for me to hear government and regulators continually speak about the role of parents and teachers in supporting young people regarding the social media restrictions.

But for many young LGBTQI plus people, seeking support about who they are at home and in school is not safe or available. Anonymity is particularly important in LGBTI communities And as it provides that additional layer of safety and control of the sharing of personal information.

In public health, there is a well known analogy about a broken bridge where people continue to fall into the river below some of them struggling or even drowning. And the response is to focus on pulling people out downstream rather than fixing the bridge itself. The lesson is that effective policy must address the source of harm and not just its consequences. In that context, the social media ban does not require broken digital environment.

It simply restricts access, and this risk diverting young people into these less visible and less regulated spaces while leaving them unprepared while they inevitably engage online.

A more effective approach is to strengthen platform accountability, invest in skills for young people to navigate these environments safely. ESafety has commenced a comprehensive evaluation to understand how the new obligation is working in practice and what impact it has on children and families. And this major study will assess how the agents' restrictions are being implemented. And, of course, that will contribute to valuable knowledge, to the global conversation about children's social media and well-being.

Across the sector, there is a strong sense that we really do not yet fully understand the impacts, and, of course, it's early days.

The outcomes from this approach will likely not be seen for some years and will require young people to not be socialized on social media at all until they're 16 to determine whether the policy has achieved its intended outcomes. Digital platforms, particularly social media, are often the first entry point for mental health support, peer connection, and crisis services and are critical tools for reaching vulnerable young people. Young people in, rural and regional areas particularly find these platforms to be essential in their connection.

It is still LHA's position that restrictive policies risk unintentionally cutting off those protective networks and increasing harm. This highlights the need for balanced evidence based approaches that align with established processes and are co designed with young people and communities and focus on harm reduction.

Strengthening inclusive data collection is also critical to understanding real world impacts. And a lot of studies that are undertaken, variables so that we can identify LGBTQ plus people are not included. So if restrictions are effective and workarounds are minimized, there must be a strong focus in ensuring that young people are equipped with the knowledge and skills and safety to navigate social media. In closing, the goal of protecting young people online is shared.

The challenge is ensuring that the measures we implement achieve the goal without creating new risks or leaving some people more isolated, than before.

We encourage a careful evidence based approach that recognizes the critical role digital spaces play in the lives of vulnerable young people and works with rather than against how they connect, seek support, and stay safe. Thank you for listening, and I look forward to questions.

Thank you so much. I'm sorry. We couldn't get video and audio, but we heard you, and it was super helpful. Okay. That was our last any questions, Sherwood?

Great. Thank you, madam chair. And I'm just trying to to to breathe because I think this is a fantastic panel that was willing to give her time today to come talk with us. I think is underscoring significant pros and significant cons.

You know, I wanted to maybe just kinda going in order, you know, doctor Mann, you know, you reminded me of something that, we thought about when we were discussing a relevant bill a couple of weeks ago, that the harms that we're seeing as well, you know, they're not LGBTQs are not immune to those either.

And that was not lost on me because it's very well I'm very well mindful of the acute, challenges that LGBTQ specifically have when it comes to mental health.

We know the numbers. We know that there is significant disparity on issues of depression. As you had mentioned, anxiety, I would further. And that platforms that leave themselves susceptible to compulsive behaviors, etcetera, or other challenges, right, one would think would be disproportionately harmful to those who come into that kind of activity already predisposed to vulnerabilities, right, that is gonna exacerbate conditions that they may already have. It's that was not lost on me.

So that a challenge for thinking of, well, there could be disproportionate benefits, but also disproportionate harms. So maybe all the more reason why threading this issue together and how we're addressing social media regulation and the experiences and the needs of the LGBTQ community, is very ripe for discussion. At the same time, you know, we heard from, you know, doctor Young and others as well, some of the benefits.

It should not be lost on us that if this is the kind of great study and and work that we're seeing in this early, now early days of social media use that we're seeing access to very positive health services that in controlled studies that I think I'm gonna and doctor Young, correct me if I'm wrong, that, controlled studies that you talked about, that that those that are, seeking for, HIV preventative or other disease preventative services are more, are found to be more true because of the availability of these communities and these online resources.

You know, that's something that is a significant benefit, I guess, to the community.

So it's something we wrestle with as we're thinking about, like, you know, what the pros and the cons are. And maybe that really brings me home to, you know, have to continue to think more critically about, I think, what we're talking about is that, you know, we don't wanna lose sight of the positive opportunities that this is happening here for community, but, you know, really training our efforts towards mitigating the negative harm.

I had a question on behalf of our colleague, Sun Member Ziburr, who had to run to another appointment. I'm grateful he was here for a lot of the presentations, and this is specifically for doctor Young, if he wanted to be able to join us again on screen.

You know, we talked earlier in the first panel as well about, let me pull up his words to sort of get it correct, you know, the perspectives about other recommendations for policy approaches if we don't wanna have, you know, an outright ban.

You know, what are are some kinds of of guardrails? What should we be looking at that would allow for LGBTQ youth to be able to obtain some of the connective and interactive benefits of social media, but protect them from harmful attributes? And he wondered if, you had any kind of thoughts on that as, you're working with, study participants that you are.

Yeah. Absolutely. And I thank you for the the question and just the nuance thinking about this. I mean, I think, more research is needed. So, monitoring, not just whether accounts are decreasing if there's a policy change, but, not just whether access declines, but what is happening?

Would you then be moving to private accounts, anonymous spaces, VPNs, shared devices? If they are losing communities in one place, are they being exposed to risk elsewhere? And so I think having research and supporting research and funding research to help track that. So tracking cyberbullying, exposure, harassment reports, unwanted sexual contact, sleep disruption, problematic use, mental health, help seeking, use of secondary accounts, migration to anonymous or private spaces, would be helpful to be able to track this type of information.

And then with platforms, platforms should be accountable for collecting and reporting safety relevant data.

And so much of the data that we need to be able to keep track of these outcomes that I just mentioned, The industry, the social media companies have them, and policies and independent researchers need privacy protective access to the aggregated and auditable data so we can evaluate these policies. So those, I think, you know, I'm not here to have a stand on whether, you know, removing access or not.

But I think, providing, research on data is really important so we can see what is what's happening and what will be happening.

Yeah. I I'll just note because one of the problems with all of the policy in this space is the pesky courts that have really tied our hands behind our back with decisions on the first amendment and section 230. And there was a bill a few years ago by former chair Gabriel on data related to hate speech online, and that was overturned by the ninth circuit.

So we do have to as we thread this needle, we not only have to thread what we're talking about today, we also have to thread the needles the courts have created for us, which makes this an even more complex problem to deal with. So I just wanted to highlight that because I think there's been some really good ideas put forward today, and, my reaction to some of them has been high wish.

But yeah.

Yeah. Thank you. And, and doctor Young, you're right. Aye, some of the response that you're talking about is actually gonna dovetail real quick. I wanted to circle back with miss Bath about some of those measurements, some of those experiences they're having right now that they're in an ecosystem where they're able to measure.

But more specifically, you know, are there do you think of other guardrails that we need to be able to have if we don't, you know, eliminate access to a lot of the these, sort of, more addictive feed, algorithm based social media platforms? You know, what can we do or what do you recommend from any policy spaces that provide that, I guess, assurances of reduced harm?

If you if you if you thought of anything that critically, I know that your area of research is, you know, a little slightly tangential. But

Look. I don't think anybody actually has the magic answer to the can you tell me if you can still hear me, or should I turn my camera back off?

It's working.

Okay. Great. I don't think that there's a sort of magic bullet to managing this issue. When we're talking about solutions, and I think for us, obviously, Australia is, you know, at the forefront with the social media restrictions. The things that we're talking about, how do we educate young people in regards to how they're interfacing with social media, but also how can we better regulate the social media providers so that they can create safer spaces.

And some of those things have been talked about with regards to algorithms and the like. It's a very I wish I could come and say, yes. We've got the answer. We just don't have and I don't sitting here have an answer for you. I just know that it's multifaceted, and it requires quite sophisticated thinking, and a blanket age restrict restriction isn't doing that.

Yeah. Thank you. And I, appreciate your observations early as much as you're trying to quickly monitor, track, measure, sort of, what the behavior changes are looking like. And you'd mentioned that, you know, you're seeing, affected youth, that are going to less visible spaces, potentially more harmful spaces, less controlled spaces. Of course, that's all smart youth do, including our kids growing up.

Right? They're gonna find creative workarounds to be able to, you know, be able to access this. Nevertheless, I remember from, I think, a previous brief that we had too about, you know, what to suspect, what to expect maybe in the Australia experience. You correct me if the number's wrong, but it was something on the order of two and a half million accounts that would have been affected. It's large.

And, you know, I'm wondering to the extent that you're tell us a little bit more about the kinds of things that you're measuring, not just for LGBTQ youth, but for all youth in the forms of other daily behaviors and activities, I guess, that, you know, may have been a consequence to social media addiction in, you know, recent years?

So from our perspective, so as a pet body, we're not a service provider. Our member organizations provide services. If we look at Q Life, which is like the Trevor Project, we have four partner organizations that are community controlled, LGBTQ plus health and well-being organizations providing those services.

So we're looking at service level data of a hack from Q Life, but We're also looking at more broadly the organizations particularly that are working with under sixteens, what the changes are and how that's measuring out in service utilization. So we're also looking at and trying to measure the impact from a mental health and well-being perspective.

I think it's important to also acknowledge from a measurement perspective, we do have a study here in Australia. It's called writing themselves in. It's run by La Trobe University through the Australian Research Centre for Sex, Health, and Society. But, we have just finished the next round of surveys for that study. And so it'll be interesting to see where we can start to look at and see what since the last one was several years ago.

So we'll be able we'll be able to start to map to see what some of those implications are through social media.

But as I alluded to, I think one of the things that we have to be careful about here in Australia and for considerations, not that I understand the, situation there in California, but what we find is a lot of the research more broadly into young people doesn't ask questions around the variables in for sex, gender innate variations of sex characteristics and sexual orientation. And so, we're unable to pull out the data specifically for LGBTQ plus young people and adults.

This happens across all surveys. So, I would say in regards to the research, it's really critical that those questions get asked so that we can multiple things that we're that we're looking at, but also we're restricted because in the way that the broader young cohorts can be measured, we can't pull ourselves out of that data.

So it's very gray.

Thank you for that. And I guess my last question, just to kinda dig in a little bit more, you know, some consequences that we are aware of In recent years, you've seen a decline in after school activities, sports participation, in person, peer to peer activities. And I know that this just went into effect, and so it may be too soon to kinda measure.

But are these the kinds of things that, not necessarily you, but, partner organizations that are monitoring the, effect of this policy change, might be looking at for youth behavior?

Well, in the context of the services that they provide, so many of those services, one one service, for example, 2010 is based in Sydney. They do heaps of work in regards to social connection, in person social connection as well as online connection. They use a platform, Padlet, to do that. And, broadly, you know, we're looking at, you know, how through sport and as you say in other ways we can still, support face to face connection.

One of the challenges that we face here is, of course, which is an international phenomena and certainly we we're seeing this in, of course, from, your country, is the challenge and the, backlash we have to trans and gender diverse people accessing sport.

And this also can be playing out in community sports and also the way in which we're having backlash towards specific activities for young LGBTQI plus people within environments like schools and young people's social settings. So we are facing these, health and well-being challenges and they're faced as they are for you within political contact. Like, these, connections are more challenging. And also, for some people, it's it's risky to even start to engage in some of those because of the potential community backlash.

So we're operating in unsafe times and in uncharted waters, and it's very sad for me as an old person to be saying that what I'd hoped you know, I often talk about the fact that it's too late for me. I'm old and, well, I've always strived.

You know, strive to do

We still have a lot more time.

In the work that I do every day is to make the trajectory for young people different because we don't want to see adult data with high mental health issues, high suicidal ideation, people being, disconnected from families. We don't want to be seeing that. That's something that happened in my generation.

And what we wanna make sure is that what we're doing for our young people is making it so that they have a good life course, that they have good mental health, that they can participate in school and education, that they can find employment. And all of the things that we're talking about today have impact on that.

And, of course, that impacts on the economy.

I couldn't agree more. Well, thank you, doctor, miss Bath, and, thank you to all of our participants as well. Aye, really appreciate, both the research and your dedication to digging in on this issue as we try to figure out best path forward for the benefit of our youth.

I had one follow-up question, Nikki, which is you I think you said you don't provide the crisis lifeline services. You have a partner organization that does that. Is that correct? Yeah. Do you know Yes.

That's right. We provide sort of national infrastructure. We have four sites across the country.

Got it. So do you know because one of the things that was raised in an earlier panel that I think, was concerning to me was, if you don't have access to these platforms, they won't be able to find those resources. Have you seen so far, and again, to the assembly member's point, it's early days, but, honestly, this could have happened overnight. Have you seen drops in number of youth calling those crisis lifelines at all?

No. We've not necessarily seen a drop, but we didn't see the increase that we thought that we would see. So we saw an increase in the, figures of people contacting Q Life in the run up to, the restriction. And we did expect that to continue as did other telework service providers that aren't specifically for LGBTQ plus young people, and we haven't seen that. And we're kind of wading through the weeds to really sort of understand why is that the case.

Is that because of the young people getting around the age restriction and then still being able to access the points of support that they want to or is it that they're going elsewhere? And so we're still working through the weeds in that.

Interesting. Okay. Thank you for that. And then so the Esafety Commissioner has the online LGBTQ plus space for resources, but it sounds like one of my takeaways, and I don't recall what that space is called. But one of my takeaways from the first panel was that, you know, it's not just about resources, that resources are important without a doubt, but that it is about connection and community, which resources don't provide.

Does that space that the safety commissioner is provide any connection, or is it really just a resource hub?

So they have a resource hub on their website. Okay. As we were working towards the implementation of the, age restriction, they did specific resources for LGBTQ plus young people that we assisted in the development of. So we, I think it's important to say in the Australian context, our community controlled organisations, the health and well-being organisations that are across the country, they're very, very poorly resourced.

And so, it's really important that we start to look at what supplementary funding are we putting through those organizations to be able to enable them to create more face to face engagements, noting that the reality is the same, you know, in The States.

But Australia's massive and, you know, some people can be living in very small towns miles and kilometers away from anywhere else. And those and the reliance on digital connection is massive, and we rely on it. We rely on it as service providers as a way of reaching out to people.

Do you have and I'll ask you this first because you're on the screen, but I wanna ask this question of all of our panelists, although doctor Young already answered it. Do you have sort of a vision of what you would have liked to see in Australia to protect from the harms, of social media in lieu of where the nation went?

Absolutely. I think what we would prefer to see is the actual provider, how they are providing, these platforms and really good education processes for young people to be able to navigate and be equipped to be able to have signaling around those harms so that they can manage them. I think, you know, for the most marginalised people in our communities, the increased opportunity for online grooming and all of those other implications are really significant and we need to be able

to have honest conversations around conversations around that. And in regard to that also, we need to be able to have honest conversations about that in ways that doesn't then create media and political debate that then continues to demonize LGBTQ plus people, particularly young trans and gender diverse people.

Thank you. And I don't know if, doctor Green or miss Mann wanna answer that too. Sort of what what is your vision of how we thread the needle we've identified here today that I think I can speak for myself sounds like a very challenging one, but one that I think we can do. I mean, if either of you have anything to add on that.

Miss Chen, you wanna go first?

Sure. I'm happy to chime in. I think the biggest thing that we've talked about here is how to reduce harm. Right? Recognizing that this is a space of duality of harm and benefit and, you know, we want to be able to provide access to communities when it makes sense.

I think the biggest and perhaps the thing that's kind of resonated here throughout the conversations is this reduction of these really algorithmically driven feeds that are pushing content that is maybe potentially beneficial, but also has a potential to be deeply, deeply harmful and homophobic and transphobic and really promoting the worst of the worst in so many ways that this kind of return to sort of a personalized feed may be the the kind of I don't wanna say simple because it's not simple, but sort of, like, most simple or direct solution to, I think, the direct harm that we're talking about.

So that's sort of what I would highlight by

I can hear from others. Yeah.

Doctor Green, anything to add on that?

Yeah. I also wanna acknowledge that you all have been working on a really hard problem for, it sounds like, a really long time, and probably give you solutions that you're like, yes. We've tried that and it doesn't so I also wanna just for the work that you've done with it and acknowledge maybe it's a clinical psychologist to me how frustrating it must be to work so hard on this

and to care so much and to have every turn have the the power of the tech companies and the courts and so I'll start there. And with that say that you know I take a lot of my guidance from what we hear from young people and a lot of what they want are the ability to have more control and to have more agency and I don't mean more control like unlimited social media.

I mean they also are really frustrated when the algorithm pushes them content that they don't want. They're really frustrated when they know that it's been designed to keep them scrolling. And so having those features, those design features that are designed for profit, that are designed to keep people there, that are designed to have a people being emotionally charged, to find ways to eradicate that from these systems so that young people can engage in them.

I think alongside what other sort of things like digital literacy training, empowering young people to make choices, but, like, these systems were not built for them in mind. They're going to find ways onto them. I think it's not enough to say, like, don't use it, and not let the tech companies know that like they've got to be accountable. I don't know. I don't know the solution to get through.

Well, I don't know how to get through the court. I think we all it feels like everyone in this room is incredibly aligned on what the ideal situation would be or at least close to aligned as you can get a group of people from different backgrounds to be. And the question is how do you get the design features that we believe to be harmful to create a better experience that allows all the good parts and gets rid of all of the harmful garbage.

I don't know the output. I don't know the court systems on them. I don't know how to help you all.

like, foolproof where it's like they can't do this one. It sounds like you're just gonna keep having, like, loopholes that you have to, like, gas fill back and forth to get there.

Yeah. Well, thank you, doctor. And I will say that I really actually appreciated, miss Pick mentioned, the parents, the survivor parents. I think it was you who mentioned the survivor parents, who show up in hearings in Washington, and many of them have been here in, our hearing room to talk to us about the harms of social media. And they are the bravest people I've ever met.

How they keep going after losing a child, I will never understand, but they turn that pain into power, and it has changed the course of this committee over my eight years sitting here. And it gives us, I think, the fuel to keep going. And, sadly, the social media companies have won many of the rounds, but it doesn't mean we're done, and we won't be until we are protecting all of our youth, including our LGBTQ youth.

So I will say that, and we are lucky to have staff that are willing to read every single case in every single jurisdiction in the country and try to figure out a path forward. So at two in the morning, I know because I get the emails.

So thank you all. I mean, I wanna close just by saying thank you. This has been an incredible conversation. I've been wanting to have it, and I think it really did, I think, highlight a lot of, the work we have tried to do, and we continue to try to do.

And I think, I believe in the future where we have safe online spaces and where our kids are not, you know, the prey of corporations that are trying to turn their attention into profit, but instead creating spaces where they can connect and find resources and find the hope that we heard, Mady talk about so eloquently.

And I think that I've long believed this is the committee that's gonna help chart that course, and I believe that this conversation helped us, to do that. And so I wanna lastly just thank chair Ward and the LGBTQ plus community and Equality California for their partnership in this hearing. We could not have had such a productive and awesome conversation without your help. So with that, any closing words, chair Ward? Yeah.

So we will go to public comment if anyone is here and has some. Oh, mister Young is raising his hand. Mister Young, you wanted to add something, and then we'll go to public comment? Thank you so much.

Oh, thank god. She's got to get down. Thank you. I was just gonna echo what doctor Green had said. I was in the chat, privately messaging her just how impressed I was.

The briefing document of how much knowledge and how much work and thought had gone into this. And I was kinda joking with her of, I don't wanna waste their time here because I'm just gonna be repeating, you know, things that are in the briefing document. They've really done their homework.

One other, again, without knowing the courts, but one other idea was about the algorithm and the nuance behind the algorithm. And that, as we talked about, recommendation systems can be helpful in finding relevant information, and they can also intensify negative things like distress or compulsive use. But, maybe there can be some policy around optimizing the algorithm. Policy can ask what is the system optimizing for.

The companies are well aware and have the potential and resources with AI to figure out are they optimizing for things that are healthy, versus not healthy.

With, my daughter, I was talking to her. I have an 11 year old daughter and found out, had a discussion with her about social media and thought she's using it even though she's not allowed to and wanted to find out. And I said, what are, you know, what are you seeing in your feeds? And she said, I don't understand this conversation around all these negative things people are seeing in their feeds.

All I see are these annoying, videos trying to show me how to play violin better.

And I thought, okay. This is because we are guiding and showing these things. So the algorithm can be optimized for positive things and maybe some of the regulation around what is the algorithm optimizing for and the companies have the data and ability to analyze and adjust.

Yeah. Thank you. Our, Senator Skinner, who did one of the landmark bills in California, has a definition of addictive feeds, and it tries to get at that question of optimizing for engagement. And the courts have upheld that definition. So there we go.

We have some wins in the courts on our side. And then I did wanna highlight also Assemblymember Berman who has led the way on, media literacy. Sadly, in the state of California, it takes years to get anything actually done in our classrooms, but it is , underway and I have actually seen the draft. So I know it is coming, but, yeah. Oh, another hand.

See, they think we can see when their hand is raised. They don't know that we can't see it. Okay. Miss Nikki. Oh, miss Nikki, you apparently, your hand is up.

Thank you. It was just to offer I mean, we're live and, very happy to stay connected in any way to anybody, any of the panel members, any of ourselves, that, you know, that have appeared today, so that we can remain connected and be drip feeding information and experience, through to you as we have it. So very happy to stay connected, and thank you again for the opportunity.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Okay. Now we're turning to public comment. Thank you for your patience.

Good afternoon. Craig Pulsipher on behalf of La Quality California. You know, first, just wanna start off and just express, sincere thanks to the chair, the committee, Chair Ward, the LGBTQ caucus just for convening, this really thoughtful dialogue and hearing today. Also to the committee staff just for the really thoughtful background, all the work that went into preparing this hearing, and, of course, just for all of the really, excellent panelists that just brought so many important perspectives to this conversation.

Know that there will be more kind of conversations moving forward, but, you know, Quality California very strongly supports efforts to protect, young people online, but also agree with, you know, so much of what has been shared today regarding some of the, you know, particular risks and benefits for LGBTQ youth in particular.

So just as these conversations move forward, as the legislature is considering, these proposals, just looking forward to more dialogue on this issue, and really making sure that these efforts, you know, protect young people without risking some of those beneficial forms of community engagement and support. So, again, thank you again for the thoughtful dialogue today.

Thank you. And I saw the question, Nikki. Thank you for joining. You can drop off. I don't know what time it is there, but you probably wanna go to sleep or something.

So oh, it's early. Okay. Go ahead.

Yeah. Afternoon chairs. George Cruz on behalf of the California Behavioral Health Association. Likewise, wanted to echo the gratitude for holding this important hearing today. Efforts to make online spaces safer for young people.

And we support stronger safeguards against cyberbullying, harassment, exploitation, privacy violations, and platform design features that drive compulsive views. But at the same time, CBHA is concerned about the policies that would cut LGBTQ plus youth off from affirming resources, crisis support, peer connections, and safe online communities. For some youth, especially those in unsupportive homes or communities, with fewer affirming resources, online spaces are a connection point to safety and support.

So we asked the legislature to search for solutions that reduce harm without increasing isolation, and we also urge the legislator to include community based behavioral health providers to this work as they see the downstream impact when youth experience online harm, isolation, rejection, and crisis. Thank you so much.

Thank you. And it looks like that was our last public comment, so we will adjourn the hearing. Thank you all.