TRENTON, NJ (KYW Newsradio) — As the mother of young girls, Assemblywoman Andrea Katz says body image and eating disorders are a major concern, often magnified by social media usage.
She has introduced two bills to stop problems before they start.
The first bill establishes an office for disordered eating prevention within the department of health.
“This would bring a lot of awareness to the issue and even more importantly create an avenue for grants to provide funding and research into disordered eating,” said Katz.
The other piece of legislation would attempt to limit the amount of diet and exercise content that can be pushed to users on social media.
“The algorithms can send you down a hole towards folks who are losing weight in not such healthy ways, and we really need to be careful that those kids aren’t being sent down that path,” said Katz.
She said tackling the algorithms will be challenging to legislate because sometimes unhealthy habits are presented as positive content.
“We need to keep looking into this. We need to keep doing more,” said Katz. “There is a very fine line and that’s how our vulnerable populations are getting sucked into these rabbit holes.”
Both bills have yet to get a legislative hearing before they can move forward towards votes and potential passage.