My Father’s Day request: A safer internet in honor of my lost son

No new legislation has been passed in more than 25 years that would meaningfully protect children online.

Shiny new toolboxes, maybe dinner out at Red Lobster, or a family day in the countryside — all great Father’s Day gifts. 

But I want something infinitely more precious. I want my son back. 

Five years ago, my youngest child, Matthew, went upstairs after dinner and finished his homework to use the one hour of daily screen time we allowed him. While scrolling on TikTok, he came across the viral “blackout challenge,” in which children are encouraged to choke themselves to the point of passing out to make a funny video. 

Matthew tried it and, tragically, he died of accidental asphyxiation. He was just 12 years old.  

Matthew was a joyful, loving kid with dimples for days and a disarming, million-dollar smile that melted all bad feelings away. He was compassionate and wise beyond his years, happily — and quite literally — giving the clothes off his back to others in need.

In fact, when he was 10 years old he came home from one of the first days of school in a run-down pair of sneakers I didn’t recognize. When I asked him what happened to the brand-new Nikes we’d gotten him, he said simply, “Oh, this other kid needed shoes, so I gave him mine.”

My pain today from losing my son is as fresh as it was the moment that I realized that he was gone. It always will be. 

Which is why I now dedicate so much of my time to advocating for the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), a broadly bipartisan and wildly popular bill before Congress that will finally hold social media platforms accountable for their toxic products. 

Because let’s not mince words: Social media is deliberately designed to be addictive. It uses finely-tuned algorithms to hook kids into an infinite, and increasingly dangerous, scroll filled with content that encourages them to try lethal challenges, starve themselves and even commit suicide. All because this horrific content is more likely to keep children glued to the screen generating billions in advertising dollars for the platforms. Never mind the fact that this business model is killing our kids. 

This must stop.

No new legislation has been passed in more than 25 years that would meaningfully protect children online. And in that time, countless children have been seriously harmed. The “blackout challenge,” otherwise known as the “pass-out challenge,” is still widely available online, despite its dangers. A 2022 Bloomberg article reported that in one 18-month period, this challenge caused the deaths of 15 children ages 12 and younger and at least five deaths of children ages 13 and 14. 

Other children have died by suicide after relentless cyberbullying or because they were sexually exploited, or sextorted, online. Some have died after taking illicit drugs purchased on social media platforms and laced with fentanyl. Others have died — or nearly so — because they learned how to eat just 500 calories daily on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. The latter platform has been found to send young users pro-eating disorder content every 8 minutes. Suicide content comes in 2.6 minutes.

KOSA, however, will finally impose restrictions on Big Tech that will save children’s lives by targeting the design and programming choices these companies make. KOSA forces them to create a safer product. 

Critically, this transformational bill imposes a “duty of care” on social media platforms to prevent a specific list of harms including anxiety, depression, bullying, eating disorders, suicidal behavior, drug and alcohol abuse and sexual exploitation. The bill also requires that social media companies turn on the strongest possible safety settings for children by default and allows minors to turn off design features that lead to addictive use, like algorithmic recommendations, which send users content they have not searched for themselves. 

KOSA mandates effective processes for reporting abuse, obligates social media companies to perform annual audits of their compliance with the bill and allows outside researchers to access internal data to study the impacts of these apps on young people. 

First introduced two years ago, the bill has gone through multiple revisions, generating enough support for nearly 70 senators to cosponsor it. The House version recently passed out of a subcommittee and is expected to pass out of the Energy and Commerce Committee any day. A wide variety of outside organizations support the bill, too, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Education Association, the NAACP Campaign and more.  

Yet, inexplicably, our lawmakers continue to drag their feet, and children continue to die. Families across America need this law now. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) must call for a floor vote without further delay. With the vast majority of senators backing the bill it will pass. And our leadership in the House must continue to advance this bill by marking it up and passing it out of the Energy and Commerce Committee so the full House can consider it and pass it, too. 

I know I’ll never get what I really want this Father’s Day. It’s heartbreakingly impossible. But in my son’s honor, I will never stop fighting to protect other children. Our lawmakers must help us in this fight. They must pass KOSA and definitively say that our children matter more than the profits-over-people-at-any-cost business model social media companies employ. 

And then, just maybe, I will get the second Father’s Day gift I want most: a safer internet, so no family ever has to go through what I have. That is a gift for fathers who truly love their children, a gift that will last.

Todd Minor and his wife, Mia Minor, are the founders of the Matthew E Minor Awareness Foundation and staunch advocates for social media safety reforms.