Mark Zuckerberg apologizes to families over social media harms in contentious Senate hearing

The families of people harmed by social media proved to be an immense force in Wednesday’s hearing.

Through applause, laughter at CEO testimony, hisses and moments of silence, the parents who say their children suffered or died as a result of social media served as a key foil. They drove tensions higher and in some cases appeared to fuel the attacks of lawmakers against the CEOs.

Congress has held many tech CEO hearings. But more than any other, the presence of so many parents in the room transformed the hearing and injected an unprecedented sense of urgency.

The Facebook whistleblower who kicked off years of scrutiny on the impact of social media on teens said Mark Zuckerberg’s apology to parents was “mindblowing.”

Today’s hearing would have been inconceivable just a handful of years ago, she said, when lawmakers were asking Zuckerberg basic questions about how his company makes money.

“Almost every hearing since has been substantially more meaningful, and they’ve asked more insightful questions, more relevant questions. This was four hours long, and there were maybe 20 minutes where I was like, ‘Do you really know what you’re asking?’ And that’s amazing.”

Asked about the potential for legislation to move forward, Haugen said she would be surprised if “we make it through another [electoral] cycle where we don’t see something.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee's grilling of four social media executives produced some notable moments. Here are a few:

Zuckerberg, Spiegel personally apologize to families: Meta CEO Zuckerberg stood to apologize to the families in the hearing room. “I’m sorry for everything you have all been through,” he said. “No one should go through the things that your families have suffered and this is why we invest so much and we are going to continue doing industry-wide efforts to make sure no one has to go through the things your families have had to suffer.”

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel also apologized to families whose children have died after they purchased drugs on Snapchat. “I’m so sorry that we have not been able to prevent these tragedies,” Spiegel said, before detailing some of the efforts the company takes to protect young users.

"The dark side" of social media products "is too great": Social media companies have created products that have an upside, but they also have a dark side that is “too great to live with,” Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said Wednesday while grilling chief executives of four such companies. Until social media companies are sued for the damage they are doing, Graham warned that there will be no change.

Hating social media companies is a rare unifying force on Capitol Hill: Wednesday’s hearing again demonstrates the breadth of criticism for social media companies among lawmakers, a rare bipartisan topic on Capitol Hill. Despite both parties’ appetite for going after tech platforms, however, Congress has yet to pass meaningful legislation to regulate social media companies. Most of the action has taken place in state legislatures and in the courts, which have become battlegrounds for new policies including age minimums for social media.

Read the full rundown of key hearing moments here.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has wrapped its hearing where lawmakers grilled four tech executives — Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, TikTok's Shou Chew, X's Linda Yaccarino and Discord's Jason Citron — on the online child sexual exploitation crisis.

Tennessee Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn confronted Zuckerberg on internal Meta documents suggesting that the company estimates the lifetime value of a teen user at $270.

“How could you possibly even have that thought? It is astounding to me,” Blackburn said, before recognizing a group of youth advocates in the audience and inviting them to stand.

When they did so, the advocates revealed that they were wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan, “I am worth more than $270.”

“Children are not your priority. Children are your product,” Blackburn told Zuckerberg in the tense exchange.

Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy said Meta platforms have become a "killing field of information" where users "see only one side of an issue."

Zuckerberg rejected this characterization of his business.

In this environment, Kennedy claimed, the platforms can become a "cesspool of snark."

Asking if Facebook makes it clear to its users how their data is monetized by the platform, Kennedy said, "Does your user agreement still suck?"

This prompted some laughter in the room.

Zuckerberg said people get the basics of how social media works.

"You're in the foothills of creepy. You track people who aren't even Facebook users," Kennedy said. "I just wonder if if our technology is greater than our humanity in the interest of this funnel."

In conclusion, Kennedy told Zuckerberg, "If you think that Instagram is not hurting millions of our young people, particularly young teens, particularly young women, you shouldn't be driving."

Youth advocates in the room are pushing back on Mark Zuckerberg’s apology, saying talk is cheap and calling for the company to “step out of the way” of national regulation.

Arielle Geismar, 22, started using Instagram a decade ago and says she was directly affected by eating disorder content on the app.

During an interview on the sideline of the hearing, she accused Zuckerberg of downplaying a link between social media and mental health harms, and dismissed his claims that Meta and other platforms are working hard to create safe spaces for users.

"It feels disgusting to sit there and be lied to,” Geismar told CNN. “His words are less than a drop in the bucket … it is really, really nice for him to be able to say a few words and assuage everything, but it doesn’t bring back any human and it doesn’t take back the harm.”

Zamaan Qureshi, co-chair of the advocacy group Design It For Us, called Zuckerberg’s apology “a pretty insane moment” during an interview with CNN.

“I think it was pretty emotional for a lot of people in the room. You’re in here, you can kind of feel that tension right now. It certainly feels like there’s a tide turning in trying to get something done here.”

In response to prompting from California Democrat Sen. Laphonza Butler, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel apologized to families whose children have died after they purchased drugs on Snapchat.

"I'm so sorry that we have not been able to prevent these tragedies," Spiegel said, before detailing some of the efforts the company takes to protect young users, including proactively monitoring for drug-related content and working to educate teens and families about the dangers of fentanyl.

"I know that there are good efforts. None of those things are keeping kids from getting access to drugs on your platform," Butler said in response.

TikTok CEO Shou Chew was grilled several times on the company's connection to China, via its parent company ByteDance, and the amount of access and influence the platform grants to the Chinese government.

In one instance, Chew told Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton that it was "a coincidence" that he was appointed CEO of the platform a day after the Chinese Communist Party's China internet investment fund bought a 1% stake in ByteDance's main Chinese subsidiary, getting a seat on the board of the subsidiary. Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley also questioned Chew about the company's connections to China and its communist party.

In another instance, under questioning from Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, Chew described the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing as a “massive protest.” While Chew’s characterization of the event is accurate, it omits the subsequent bloody crackdown against pro-democracy activists by the Chinese government that today is heavily censored on the Chinese internet.

When later pressed about on his answer by Sen. Cotton, Chew said the event was also “a massacre.”

Chew has previously testified to Congress that TikTok allows content about Tiananmen Square on its platform. TikTok does not operate within China. But its parent company, ByteDance, distributes a substantially similar app known as Douyin.