U.S. Senator Katie Britt (R-Montgomery) thinks that social media companies are not going to do what it takes to protect children online on their own, so they need a push from the federal government.

Britt has made it a priority to protect children online and introduced measures such as the Kids Off Social Media Act and the Stop the Scroll Act earlier this year.

The senator discussed the issue Tuesday on Rightside Radio.

“Well, gosh, I wish the social media companies would just do the right thing, and then you wouldn’t need any type of regulation or guardrails,” Britt said. “But they won’t put them in themselves, and they have shown that time and time again.”

Britt blamed her colleagues in Congress along with the social media companies themselves for not doing enough to protect kids.

“Knowing what we know now, which they not only know, but orchestrated a great deal of, yet refused to protect our most vulnerable, and what I believe to be our greatest asset, which is the next generation, I think it’s just absolutely despicable,” she argued. “And truly, I think Congress is feckless. I mean, they are absolute cowards that they will not tackle this head on when we are looking at what’s happening in our country.”

The senator detailed some specific examples on how “terrifying” of a place the internet can be for vulnerable children.

“And what is happening right now is just terrifying, with children taking photos of themselves and then you know, those being shared,” she said. “You have a number of avenues where that goes, whether it’s, you know, bullying, or sharing an image that you know that obviously should not have been shared, or whether it’s sextortion. And we know that there are sextortion rings in other countries, children are taking their own lives. It is just, it is mind boggling.”

“And then, if you look at things, for instance, like just social media in general, the rate of depression has more than doubled amongst our teenagers between 2011 and 2019 it more than doubled,” she added. “We know that one in three high school young women said she actually considered death by suicide. And then you’ve got about 25% of those young women said that they actually made a plan to take their own life. And then 13% of young women in America in high school actually attempted death by suicide. And when you add in young men, that number goes to nine. And so we know, and in particular the ages eight to 12, that that suicide rate has grown exponentially.”

Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” weekdays 9-11 a.m. on WVNN. You can follow him on X @Yaffee