Mental Health Update
Personal Narrative About the Importance of Fighting for Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA)
Earlier this week, MHANYS participated in a press conference with NAMI and several other advocates in support of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). We support the bi-partisan legislation in the U.S. Senate that calls for greater controls of social media sites that utilize algorithms that prey on young people. Despicable.
We are pleased that Senator Schumer has been helping to lead the charge at the Federal level and that Governor Hochul and Attorney General James are also working hard at the State level to prevent social media sites from utilizing harmful platforms.
One of the people who spoke at the press conference was Mary Rodee, who lost her son, Riley, because of the harmful effects of social media. She is an incredibly courageous and articulate advocate who is fighting hard for KOSA. Her narrative is well captured below in yesterday’s Watertown Times.
Mother of Potsdam 15-year-old Riley Basford advocates for online safety law
On Monday, Rodee stood outside the New York Capitol in Albany with a group of online safety advocates and said she was baffled to see Congress fail to move decisively to end child exploitation online.
She called for the passage of the Kids Online Safety Act, an internet safety bill that would require social media networks and other online platform providers to take measures to prevent exploitation of users and provide specific safeguards on their platforms for those younger than 18.
Rodee’s son died by suicide in March 2021, at the age of 15, after he was goaded into exchanging personal, private photos through Facebook Messenger with someone who was posing as a teen.
That person, who turned out to be an adult and part of a string of predators, blackmailed Riley, saying he would send those photos to his friends, family and across social media if he didn’t pay them $3,500.
Riley panicked, having no access to such a sum of money.
What he underwent is called sextortion, when someone tries to use sexually explicit information or photos to blackmail and extort an individual. It’s a massive issue with teens online, and Riley’s story isn’t even the only one in the north country.
Riley had just spent hours with his mother on March 30, 2021, getting braces put on to straighten his teeth. Rodee took him for a milkshake before dropping him off at his father Darren E. Basford’s house. She never dreamed it would be her last day with her youngest son.
“I have replayed what would become the last few hours with my precious child, again and again,” Rodees said during a press conference outside the state Capitol on Monday. “He was happy, chatty, excited for the upcoming spring break, looking forward to time with his friends. He was slyly peeking at his new metallic grin in the car mirrors, making jokes and plans. That was Riley. Our tragedy unfolded in less than six hours after on Facebook Messenger.”
She said it took just a few hours for her world to come undone, for her son to transition from the bubbly, happy person she knew to someone considering and carrying out suicide.
“I said goodbye to him at 10:15, with plans to see him later,” she said. “At 3:30, I was standing in the same spot, on his dad’s lawn, looking at a body bag containing the greatest thing I had ever created.”
The people who targeted Riley were identified by the FBI and New York State Police. But they were never prosecuted for the crimes they committed, Rodee said, because the country they were in doesn’t cooperate with U.S. law enforcement.
But she puts blame also on Facebook and its parent company, Meta, which she said could have stopped the fake account from preying on teenagers and still hasn’t acknowledged its own role in Riley’s death.
She said a lack of transparency, and the complete abdication of social media companies from publicly reporting any information on their systems, algorithms or products, is at fault.
“Social media platforms deliberately make protecting our kids online impossible,” she said.
The Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, would require that online platforms like social media and videogame service providers, but not email services or educational providers, take “reasonable” measures to prevent minors and users from being bullied, sexploited, harassed or otherwise targeted for criminal or antisocial behavior.
Platforms must also provide to minors specific protections that restrict access to information about and communication with the user, and provide robust supervision tools for parents and guardians.
These platforms must also regularly disclose details about their algorithms and targeted advertisements to users, as well as generate an annual public report on the possible risks posed by youth use of their platform. Companies must also provide reporting mechanisms for users, guardians and school districts to report issues they see with the platform.
Some details about specific rules and regulations would be left up to an advisory council for the law, as well as the Federal Trade Commission.
That plan has the support of a wide swath of advocates, including local lawmakers, mental health experts, public health advocates and more.
On Monday, Rodee spoke alongside a member of the Albany City Council, the senior New York director for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the CEO of the Mental Health Association of New York, and a licensed mental health counselor working with teens with eating and body image disorders.
It also has the support of Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, but Rodee said she was shocked and dismayed to see the bill has not yet been passed into law.
“The protection of our children is not just a matter of policy, it’s a matter of life and death, and I’m truly baffled by the delays that we are witnessing,” she said.
Rodee is headed to Washington, D.C., at the end of the month to witness a hearing, where the leaders of Meta, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok’s U.S. arm, SnapChat and web chat platform Discord will be answering questions posed by Senate Judiciary Committee members. Rodee said she has submitted questions for the senators to ask, but she said she isn’t hopeful to hear valuable responses from the CEOs.
“I don’t know what they’ll say,” she said. “What I want is the duty of care. That’s the part of KOSA that could have protected Riley.”
She said the current federal online privacy laws date back to the late 1990s and don’t reflect the reality of the internet today.
“Twenty-five years ago people were mainly using email, and Facebook only became a billboard like 10 years later,” she said. “It wasn’t this interactive content until later.”
While KOSA holds many changes Rodee said are necessary, it’s not the whole answer. She said there’s a key social question to answer with social media and personal internet-connected devices, something that’s bigger than social media itself.
“Phones are an extension of our person now, they’re always around,” she said. “We’re lulled into this facade that they’re safe, you think your kid is just in their bedroom, you’re making dinner in the kitchen, and it’s OK. It’s not OK, they’re somewhere else in that bedroom.”
She also said there are real issues with the addictive nature of social media and its algorithmically generated feeds, which are especially effective on underdeveloped brains.
“As a society, we need to realize that we’ve made this a part of our everyday reality and realize what needs to be done at home to fix it,” she said.
As a teacher, Rodee said she’s seen the amount of pressure put on the education sector to address these issues, but she said the issue needs to get attention at home.
“The whole culture that this is normal, that your friends aren’t people you know in real life, where I have 5-year-olds coming up to me telling me they want to be successful on social media, have a million followers, that’s something KOSA can’t fix,” she said.
