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LGG OFF Written Testimony of Emma Leke, Founder and Executive Director of the LOG OFF Movement United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary: Protecting Our Children Online February 14, 2023 My name is Emma Lembke. I am originally from Birmingham, Alabama. I am currently a college sophomore studying Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis. I am honored and humbled to be here today. I created my first social media account on Instagram when I was 12. 1 was in 6th grade and I was the last in my friend group allowed on social media platforms. At the time, I distinctly remember watching these apps pull my friends' attention away from games of tag and down, towards their screens. To 12-year-old me, these platforms almost seemed magical; tools that could deepen society's connective, expressive, and exploratory capabilities. It felt as though 1, a girl from Birmingham, Alabama, had the world at my fingertips, but as I began to spend more time on these platforms, I was met with a harsh reality. Social media was not magic. It was an illusion, a carefully designed product predicated on maximizing my attention at the cost of my well-being. As my screen time steadily increased, my mental and physical health suffered. The constant quantification of my worth through likes, comments, and followers increased my anxiety and deepened my depression. As a young woman, being exposed to unrealistic body standards and harmful recommended content severely damaged my sense of self and led me towards disordered eating. I became the living embodiment of u::,.a. , ,Ib, ,o lk.,..s, ,w E „0,19.. .nteirna ,iresearc p fu„n„d„u„n 9,that their platforms made body image issues worse for one in three teen girls. No matter the harm I incurred, addictive features like the endless scroll and autoplay pulled me back into the online world where I continued to suffer. And there, I remained for over three years, scrolling mindlessly for 5-6 hours a day. I eventually reached a personal breaking point in the 9th grade that caused me to temporarily remove social media apps