NEWYORK: New York city Mayor Eric Adams expressed concern over social media impact on young people and said that we need to have a plan to stop it.
Speaking at media briefing, Mayor Adams said that he does not know why we’re ignoring what is happening to these young people and the role that social media is playing and the impact of this.
“Our children are being radicalized. We need to have a real plan to stop it. I’m not going to pretend like it’s not a problem, because I’m seeing it every day. This is a perfect example. Getting an automatic weapon, climbing on a rooftop, pointing at a gun at someone that you don’t know, and you are attempting to assassinate them, if that’s not radicalization, then I don’t know what is,” he said.
He said that we continue to drill down into public safety.
“Public safety is a prerequisite to prosperity,” he said adding that NYC is going to continue to move in a direction and make the city as safe as a big city in America and continue to do that.
“Everybody is taking notice. New York City, I’m looking at some of the headlines that we’re getting, that New York City is the city to live, work, and visit in the United States,” he said.
He said that hate is calling for the destruction, the harm of people.
” When a 20-year-old can get access to an automatic weapon and have that much hate because he politically disagrees with someone and attempt to take the life of that individual and take the life of innocent people who were there, there’s nothing wrong with healthy disagreement in politics,” he said.
To a question regarding change of policies if Trump is elected, Mayor Adams said that
he was not going to speculate on the policy shift or changes.
” I made it clear I’m rolling with Biden. I cannot be any clearer in that and I think there’s a path forward to deal with the migrant and asylum seeker issue,” he said.
To another question about social media impact on young people and its solution, Mayor Adams said that they have done a combination of things.
He said that since Dr. Vasan brought this to our attention, the impact, particularly around suicidal ideations, depression, violence, children at the age of 12 and 13, how it impacts on their brain development, desensitizing young people and even adults to violence and the appearance of violence we know we need a full-frontal assault.
“One of them is that we’re suing social media companies to go after them, to make them more responsible with these algorithms. Number two, then it’s going to have to come down to everyday human engagement. That’s why we’re exploring everything from should we ban cell phones in schools to how do we regulate FaceTime. Young people are now getting engaged with this as well. Many of them are saying, we want to wean ourselves off of social media. It has an impact on our lives. It’s a combination of things that we must do and self-monitoring as well as governmental regulations and legislation, as well as social media companies becoming more responsible,” he said.
Regarding fundraising question, Mayor Adams said that he is just happy New Yorkers were able to contribute to my campaign more than both theirs combined.
“I’m just going to continue to work hard. That’s all I do. I just, I stay focused. No distractions. I just grind, man. I’m just a hard working. I’m the hardest working man in show business like James Brown, he added.
