Please help stop the negative effects of social media on adolescents. The U.S. Congress should increase the enforcement of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act to protect adolescents from mental illnesses. When children under the age of thirteen join social media apps, they will experience a delay in their emotional and social development. These kids could also easily become addicted and dependent on social media apps at such a young age and miss out on school, sleep, and various activities. The COPPA needs to be enforced so that children under thirteen can not join social media apps.

 Secondly, the Truth in Advertising Act of 2014 states that the Federal Trade Commision needs to submit a report to the Congress if the advertising includes; images that have been altered to physically change appearances and recommendations for a danger focused regulatory framework with respect to such use. The goal of this act was to regulate how much advertisers could alter images, in order to keep them honest to the public. If this act was enforced and put into place it would decrease the norm of social media impacting adolescents' desire to be skinny, not eating, and being unpleasant to one another. Photoshop needs to be banned so adolescents feel confident and comfortable with their own body while not being pressured by society to look a certain way. 

Lastly, the U.S. Congress should restrict people to post graphic content and monitor comments to avoid cyberbullying that can lead to suicidal thoughts/behaviors. Adolescents are being exposed to graphic content at such a young age that affects them emotionally and mentally. Social media is a source of these harmful comments to adolescnts and need to be taken away to decrease mental health issues and suicide rates. Graphic content needs to be off social media and comments need to be monitored for these kids to be safe on social media. Therefore I am pushing the United States Congress to help stop these negative effects by enforcing these laws to help adolescents experience on social media safer.