Mikie Sherrill targets 'big tech'

Good morning!

Gov. Mikie Sherrill appeared in Jersey City yesterday to target “big tech” and sign three bills aimed at increasing online safety for children.

The most dramatic bill will implement a bunch of new restrictions on social media platforms (they go into effect next year), including barring notifications overnight and during school hours for most of the year for kids, requiring privacy settings on young people’s accounts be set to their strictest mode, and restrict when platforms can use data of minor users.

“Big tech isn’t just the big tobacco of our era. They are worse. They designed platforms that highjacked our kids’ attention spans,” Sherrill said. “The typical American teen spends about 35 hours a week, almost a full-time job, on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.”

The bill was a big priority of Assemblywoman Andrea Katz, a Burlington County Dem who in 2023 flipped a seat long held by the GOP.

“Half of parents say their children’s mental health has suffered over the past year because of social media,” Katz said. “Nearly half of teenagers say they lose sleep every single night because they feel stuck on these platforms.”

Read more from Nikita Biryukov.

More: Sherrill, who won the Dem nomination for governor last year against five other candidates including then-Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, does not seem to have entirely forgotten about that rivalry. During yesterday’s press conference, Sherrill was asked about the state’s recent gift of $120 million in state aid, most of it a loan, to help Fulop’s successor, James Solomon, close a budget gap. “What we have done with the financial package was to do a couple different things: stabilize the city so we didn’t see mass layoffs across Jersey City, harming the people who, you know, quite frankly, in many cases, through no fault of their own, had a very bad mayor who put them in a great deal of debt.” Spicy! Fulop, who now runs a business lobbying group in NYC, did not respond to a request for comment.

Health: Nonprofit advocacy group Feeding America has a new report out on food insecurity that says federal data shows the problem doubled in New Jersey over the last four years. Statewide, 13% of Garden State residents could not always count on three meals a day in 2024, the latest federal figures available, up from 7.4% in 2020. The feds have since stopped collection this type of data.

ICE: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries appeared in Morristown Tuesday with Reps. Analilia Mejia and Rob Menendez to repeat their calls for Newark migrant jail Delaney Hall to be shut down. Their appearance came 10 days after an inmate at the detention center died when the feds say he suffered cardiac arrest. Critics of the Trump administration’s immigration policies say conditions at the state’s two migrant jails are inhumane and that detainees are denied regular medical attention. “These are the types of things that we have raised over and over again,” Menendez said, “and you are seeing the dire consequences of them not being able to adequately provide healthcare to the individuals that they are bringing through Delaney Hall and Elizabeth Detention Center.”

Burlington: Lumberton Councilwoman Gina LaPlaca can’t seem to stay out of trouble. David Wildstein at the New Jersey Globe reports LaPlaca and her husband, Jason Carty, are accused by prosecutors of submitting phony signatures on nominating petitions for LaPlaca’s failed reelection bid in the June primary. LaPlaca made headlines last year when she was arrested and accused of drunken driving with her young child in the back seat. She later pleaded guilty to DUI and child endangerment charges.

Rankings: WalletHub has ranked New Jersey the No. 2 state to live in, bested only by … Idaho.