Massachusetts Could Get $516 Million From Meta. And We’re Still Debating Whether Kids Need Protection?

Massachusetts could receive up to $516 million from Meta over allegations that Facebook and Instagram harmed young people. That number got my attention, but what really got me was what we're planning to do with some of the money.

Youth mental-health services. Crisis intervention. Digital wellness programs. Phone-free schools. After-school and outdoor programs. Training for medical providers dealing with social-media use and body dysmorphia.

In other words, we're going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars dealing with the damage while Beacon Hill is still arguing over how far Massachusetts should go to protect kids from the platforms in the first place.

That is the part I can't get past.

The House and Senate have different ideas about how to do it, and there are legitimate questions about age verification, privacy, parental consent and exactly which addictive features should be restricted. Fine. Work those out.

But haven't we already answered the bigger question?

If the harm is serious enough to help produce a settlement worth as much as half a billion dollars to Massachusetts alone, protecting children from more of it is not some radical government intrusion. It's prevention.

And as an RN, prevention is where my mind goes immediately. We don't usually congratulate ourselves for treating a preventable injury after it happens. The point is to keep the injury from happening in the first place.

Social media somehow gets treated differently. We talk about children as if they are supposed to outsmart billion-dollar technology companies whose entire business depends on keeping people looking, clicking, scrolling and coming back.

Then, when kids get hurt, we build programs to help them recover.

Maybe we should stop putting quite so much of the burden on the kid.

Massachusetts may soon have hundreds of millions of dollars because of what these platforms allegedly did to young people. Use the money to help the kids who need it.

But for God's sake, learn something from why we're getting the money.

Don't just fund the cleanup. Turn off the faucet.

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