PARENTS AND TEACHERS have always had to fight to hold and direct teenagers’ attention—to get them to engage in conversation at family dinner, to encourage them to put down the video game controller and pick up a book, to make sure they do their homework instead of gossiping all night with friends. Teenagers themselves have long fought to avoid distractions and focus their attention where they needed or wanted it to be.

But something has changed in the last decade or so. It’s no longer a fair fight. That’s because social media companies have developed highly sophisticated methods of capturing and maintaining our attention. As their brains develop, teenagers are especially vulnerable to those techniques, which also pose significant risks to their mental health.

Some might say we’ve heard this story before. Wasn’t television supposed to rot children’s brains in the 20th century? But the attentional pull of social media isn’t the same as the draw of television. It’s far stronger, more akin to addiction than simple distraction.

A teenager in 1998 might have blown off math homework to watch “Dawson’s Creek” at 9 p.m. on Tuesday night, but the networks could only hold their attention for so long. They were broadcasting to a general audience, and the 10 p.m. offering might not have captured their interest.

In 2025, social media companies know exactly how to hold a teenager’s interest. It’s as if every show in the Tuesday night lineup was written and produced just for them, along with the daytime schedule and the lineup on every other weeknight. At any moment of any day, social media companies can direct today’s teenager to content that’s just as captivating as Dawson’s Creek was in 1998.

Social media companies track how long a teenager spends looking at each post, which posts they like and comment on, when they’re most likely to come online, and more. From all this data, they’re able to target content to adolescents that is individually tailored to their interests and behavioral profile.

When young people encounter this endless stream of bespoke content, they get a series of dopamine hits that keep them on the app—and social media companies get to sell more ads.

Some researchers and commentators have started referring to these data and algorithm-fueled practices as “human fracking”—a high-tech way of extracting more attention from a limited supply, just as oil and gas companies have developed innovative ways to extract more fossil fuels from sources that were thought to be exhausted.

And just as fossil fuel fracking has wreaked havoc on the environment, the “fracking” of teenagers’ attention may wreak havoc on their minds. Last year, the US Surgeon General issued an alarming Advisory on Social Media and Youth Mental Health. It noted that frequent social media use is associated with changes in parts of the developing brain that are connected to impulse control, emotional regulation, and moderating social behavior. It also explained that social media has been linked to depression, anxiety, loneliness, sleep problems, and attentional issues in teenagers.

The advisory cited research indicating that minors who spend more than three hours a day on social media face twice the risk of serious mental health problems. Given that teenagers spend an average of almost five hours per day on social media, those negative consequences may be widespread in the adolescent population.

Fortunately, Massachusetts is not powerless in the face of these harms to our children. In January, we filed legislation that would prohibit social media companies from directing content at minors through algorithms that are capable of hijacking their attention. The bill would also prohibit social media companies from interfering with minors’ sleep by sending them notifications overnight.

By prohibiting addictive algorithmic feeds for minors, we can limit the addictive power of social media and help adolescents establish more balanced relationships with technology.

Teens would still be able to use social media if the bill became law. They’d see posts from friends, posts they searched for, and posts from accounts they chose to follow, but they wouldn’t see an infinite scroll of algorithmically targeted content from accounts to which they never even subscribed. The world of social media would become more finite, and it wouldn’t be so hard for teenagers to pull themselves away.

The prohibition on algorithmic feeds would also protect teens from being steered toward potentially harmful content. These feeds have pushed children experiencing body image issues toward videos promoting eating disorders, and directed depressed teenagers to videos demonstrating how to commit suicide—often with tragic consequences. Without addictive feeds, struggling teenagers wouldn’t be able to spiral so easily into further isolation and distress.

The Commonwealth wouldn’t be the first state to pass such a law. California and New York passed their own addictive feeds prohibitions last year, overcoming vociferous opposition from Big Tech companies that were unwilling to relinquish their devastating (and profitable) hold on teenagers’ attention.

In New York, opponents led by Meta and Google spent almost $1 million on a “whisper campaign” against the addictive feeds prohibition and another bill creating safeguards related to children’s personal data. We can expect similar opposition here. When it arrives, we should remember that our children are relying on us to have the courage and the wisdom to push back on Big Tech’s self-motivated spin.

Parents and teachers are ready for change. Even teenagers are tired of social media companies robbing them of their time and attention. Let’s come together to ban the destructive fracking of our children’s minds.

Cynthia Creem, a Democrat from Newton, is the majority leader in the Massachusetts Senate. Bill MacGregor is a Democratic state representative from West Roxbury.