By Courtney Rozen
May 15 (Reuters) – The CEOs of Meta, Alphabet, TikTok and Snap have been invited back to Capitol Hill to answer questions from U.S. lawmakers about children’s online safety, according to a Senate aide.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, a Republican, invited Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew and Snap’s Evan Spiegel, said Hannah Akey, a spokeswoman for Grassley.
The companies are facing mounting criticism in the U.S. over child and teen safety. If the CEOs accept the invitation for a hearing, which was first reported by Axios, it would allow members of the Senate’s Judiciary Committee to press the executives on the topics in a public setting. Tennessee’s Marsha Blackburn and Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal, two committee members, are working to persuade their colleagues to back legislation requiring the companies to take more responsibility for how their apps affect children and teens.
The U.S. Congress has so far declined to pass comprehensive legislation regulating social media, prompting states to pass their own laws. At least 20 states enacted laws last year on social media use and children, according to the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures, an organization that tracks state bills.
Snap, Meta, Alphabet’s Google and TikTok are separately facing thousands of lawsuits in federal and state court in California accusing them of designing addictive platforms that undermine children’s mental health. Meta and Alphabet’s Google lost the first case to go before a jury in March, resulting in a $6 million verdict. TikTok and Snap settled with the plaintiff ahead of the trial. More trials are planned for the summer.
Spokespeople for the companies did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.
(Reporting by Courtney Rozen in Washington and Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva and Chizu Nomiyama )
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