Mary Rodee let her son Riley open a Facebook account so that he could purchase a snowmobile. It seemed innocent enough. That was‚ until a sexual predator used Facebook Messenger to access Riley through a group chat. Hours after the 15-year-old was blackmailed and coerced with inappropriate images‚ he committed suicide. The first line of defense when it comes to protecting kids from online exploitation by predators and from harmful social media posts is parents. Riley’s story may seem like an extreme example of child exploitation on social media — until you consider the fact that teenage depression and suicide rates are rising alongside social media use among kids. (READ MORE from Aubrey Gulick: A Girl Was Sexually Assaulted in the Metaverse. Does It Count?) It’s a mutually reinforcing problem. The more kids are depressed‚ the more likely they are to turn to their phones and social media; the more they scroll and message‚ the more depressed they tend to become. As a Wall Street Journal op-ed put it‚ social media is feeding the mental health epidemic among teenagers by driving them “into rabbit holes.” The crisis has gotten so bad that a recent Morning Consult poll found that nearly 80 percent of parents support legislation that would require their children to receive parental approval before they could download apps. As it turns out‚ 80 percent is a big enough number for both parties in Congress to take note. Social Media Hearing Was Just a Photo-Op On Wednesday‚ the Senate Judiciary Committee held a fiery hearing on “Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis.” It turned into a perfect opportunity for the politicians involved to denounce tech CEO’s — to “hold them accountable” — without actually doing anything about the problem at hand. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R—Tenn.) accused Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg of running “the premiere sex trafficking site in this country” and of turning children into products. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D—Minn.) could hardly hold back tears as she described stories of children who had been exploited on social media platforms‚ and Sen. Lindsay Graham (R—S.C.) told the Big Tech CEOs gathered there that they have “blood on [their] hands.” (READ MORE: Confronting the ‘Artificial Intelligence’ Backward-Looking Bureaucracy Trap) At one point‚ Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) asked if Zuckerberg had apologized to the “families of victims” standing in the hearing room holding up pictures of their children who had died or had been negatively impacted by social media. Zuckerberg stammered‚ stood up‚ turned toward the audience‚ and did so. It was a great photo-op. Nobody Is Sure What To Do The Senate Judiciary Committee is correct in concluding that something has to be done. Nearly 95 percent of teenagers use social media‚ according to a recent report from the U.S. Surgeon General‚ which makes these platforms the perfect tool for predators trying to exploit children. In 2021‚ there were more than 29 million cases of child sexual exploitation reported to the National Center for Missing &; Exploited Children’s CyberTipline — and those are just the cases that are reported. What they haven’t addressed is what the best way to fix the problem is. One solution senators at Wednesday’s hearing repeatedly referred to includes rescinding or reforming Section 230 — the part of U.S. law that currently protects social media from being attacked for harmful or libelous content users post. Completely rescinding the law would likely bury every social media company in mountains of legal cases and utterly change the landscape of the internet. (There’s also a good argument to be made that rescinding the law could give social media companies yet another reason to censor free speech online — which they certainly don’t need.) Any proposal to significantly alter Section 230 really amounts to wishful thinking rather than practical policy making. (READ MORE from Aubrey Gulick: If You Could Talk to the Dead‚ Would You?) Another idea is to require app companies‚ like Google and Apple‚ to force kids to obtain parental consent to download apps like SnapChat‚ Facebook Messenger‚ or X. The problem is that those features already exist. Parents can opt-in to settings like Apple’s “Ask to Buy” feature easily‚ but that doesn’t mean that they do. The First Line of Defense  The heart of the issue is that parents are the ones handing their children smart phones‚ not Big Tech CEOs. The first line of defense when it comes to protecting kids from online exploitation by predators and from harmful social media posts is parents. To be sure‚ both parents and their kids face a lot of peer pressure to give the kids access to smart phones. Additionally‚ there is something to be said for being able to communicate with your child while they are attending school — although they don’t need an $800 smart phone to accomplish that. However‚ it is only fair to note that‚ even if a kid doesn’t have a smart phone‚ his friends likely do and he can still access or witness inappropriate content on their devices. Social media platforms should be the second line of defense when it comes to protecting kids. Meta‚ X‚ TikTok‚ Snapchat‚ and Discord should absolutely take responsibility for and work to prevent sexual predators on their platforms. Regulation encouraging them to do so could even be good. Unfortunately‚ protecting kids on social media is not as easy as yelling at Zuckerberg and his ilk‚ as fun as that might be. 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