This year Public Health Advocates’ is taking a stand to protect Californians, especially children and youth, from the harms of social media. Social media is a direct contributor to a growing mental health crisis in California and across the country.
Public Health Advocates is sponsoring three bills in the California legislature in 2024 that can help Californians develop a healthier relationship with social media. We want to require social media companies to protect our kids from social media addiction. In addition, we want to empower youth and educators to teach youth about the harms of social media and de-normalize frequent social media use. Finally, we want the California legislature to form a task force to study the harms social media causes to the population at large.
Public Health Advocates is working to improve California’s ability to prepare for and respond to emergencies. That includes fixing our outdated 9-1-1 first response system and creating an equity framework for funding during widespread emergencies, such as pandemics, wildfires, and floods.
We work in partnership with communities across the state to support policies that promote our mission to improve public health and advance health equity and racial justice. Below you will find our positions on a variety of bills that are now being considered in the California legislature.