WASHINGTON (TNND) — Congress was given stern warnings about the effects social media and technology in classrooms are having on the nation’s youth as lawmakers held another hearing on potential regulations that have been subject to debate for years but have not yet resulted in any significant reforms being passed into law.

Lawmakers have held seemingly countless hearings dedicated to the dangers social media poses to the nation’s youth and made regular pushes to find a bill to rein in Big Tech companies they say are hurting kids for the sake of profits but have struggled to come to a consensus on comprehensive legislation.

It comes as other countries have been quick to regulate the tech industry. Australia recently became the first country in the world to ban people younger than 16 from using social media, a step a handful of other countries are also considering.

Here in the U.S., tech companies have mostly been left to create their own rules and best practices without action from Congress. Social media companies and AI developers have instituted a number of restrictions and parental controls on their platforms under pressure from parents and Congress, but advocates of harsher limits say those efforts have not gone nearly far enough in addressing the issues.

A panel of experts told senators on the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee on Thursday had stark warnings for the future of the country if regulators and parents don’t figure out a way to curb screen time among the country’s youth.

“I am here today with a warning: Technology is fundamentally changing childhood and in the process, undermining parents and threatening the very health of democracy,” said Emily Cherkin, an author and founder of The Screentime Consultant. “The wholescale restructuring of childhood around screens is catastrophic for children and families.”

Researchers have found links between smart device usage and access to social media to negative mental health outcomes, higher rates of anxiety and depression.

“More than half of the time that a teenager is awake, he or she is staring at a screen,” said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. “Kids need time to be kids, to experience the real world, not to get lost in a virtual one.”

Schools have turned to technology in the classroom more often to help teach and for homework assignments, with many districts providing school-issued devices to every student starting as early as elementary schools in a trend that was accelerated by the pandemic when kids were forced to attend school virtually in a policy choice that still has ripple effects on education outcomes and social skills. Many experts say that increased time looking at a screen is dramatically damaging children’s ability to learn and interact with others.

“It doesn't matter what the size of the screen is: if it's a phone, if it's a laptop, if it's a desktop, and it doesn't matter who bought it. Is it school-sanctioned? Does it have the word ‘education’ stamped on it? It doesn't matter. All of these things are also going to hurt learning,” said Jared Cooney Horvath, director of LME Global.

States across the country are already taking matters into their own hands with a wide range of laws being passed in legislatures across the political spectrum tackling the issues Congress has come up short on. State lawmakers have passed data privacy laws, limitations on what can be shown to minors, restrictions for artificial intelligence and how tech companies can use their data.

An increasing share of states have also taken to banning cellphones in classrooms amid findings that they harm educational outcomes and removing them improves kids’ mental health and attention span.

Florida was the first state to pass a law restricting use of cellphones in schools just two years ago. Today, more than half of all states have laws in place with more in the works in state legislatures. How restrictions are implemented vary, but there is a growing push to enact “bell-to-bell” bans to keep kids engaged during instruction time and interacting with their peers face-to-face.

A survey from last summer also found widespread support among Americans for banning cellphone use during class, with 74% of adults in agreement with the policy in a Pew Research Center survey.

The stakes have escalated in recent years with the advancement of artificial intelligence and chatbots that are interacting in sometimes harmful ways with kids with a wave of unknowns about where the tech is going next and what dangers it may pose to society. The traditionally slow-moving Congress has struggled to keep up with advancements in technology, creating a formidable challenge for lawmakers to predict how AI will evolve.

President Donald Trump has also made the advancement of the United States’ AI industry a cornerstone of his economic agenda, a goal many lawmakers share and creates concerns about regulation hampering its growth. But the risks are already being seen with children harming themselves

Lawmakers are under to pressure to avoid the outcomes of failing to regulate social media from happening again with AI.

“The real problem is that social media apps are deliberately engineered to book kids to keep things clicking, scrolling and coming back, and they're doing that exactly by design,” Cantwell said. “Over the last decade, Congress has failed to act on social media becoming more pervasive to harm kids. We cannot make the same mistake now that AI is becoming more pervasive, we need to address online and AI harms before it's too late.”