U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley speaks on mental health and censorship

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley was in Maquoketa yesterday at the Jackson County Courthouse. He spoke with the Jackson County Prevention Coalition, as well as members of the local media

Senator Grassley talked about wanting to protect people’s mental health, but in particular adolescents. Grassley mentioned social media and its prevalence in society as one of the causes for worse mental health in today’s children. He said that the government could put restrictions on social media companies, limiting the content that could be promoted by those companies.

I asked a follow up question about such restrictions and their implementation. The United Kingdom recently put in place online ID verification, sparking heated debates and criticisms of its effectiveness. The justification for the ID verification was that it would protect children from online adult content such as pornography and self-harm.

I asked Senator Grassley what his thoughts on this were, as well as the government as a whole. Grassley said that discussions about how the UK law will affect the United States are happening, but nothing more than that. Grassley himself only supports censorship of illegal content online, and feels that any further censorship would start to impose on the 1st Amendment.