The Senate Judiciary Committee has called the chief executives of four major social media platforms to testify before the committee on June 23, 2026, as lawmakers renew scrutiny of how the companies protect young users.
Committee chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, sent the invitations to Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Sundar Pichai of Alphabet and Google, Shou Zi Chew of TikTok, and Evan Spiegel of Snap. A committee spokesperson confirmed the invitations on Friday. Meta declined to comment, and representatives for the other companies did not immediately respond to requests.
The hearing, titled “Examining Tech Industry Practices and the Implications for Users and Families: Is This Social Media’s Big Tobacco Moment?,” comes at an inflection point for an industry confronting a series of court losses and mounting advocacy pressure. Social media companies have long disputed allegations that they deliberately design their platforms to addict children or that they fail to protect young users from sexual predators and harmful content. But a pair of verdicts in March, returned days apart, challenged that defense.
In California, a jury determined that both Meta and YouTube built their platforms to hook young users without regard for their well-being. TikTok and Snap were also named as defendants in that case but settled before trial. The day before, a New Mexico jury found that Meta knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms.
“Americans are realizing more and more every day that they cannot trust the CEOs at the helms of these companies because they do not put our safety first,” said Sacha Haworth, executive director of the watchdog group The Tech Oversight Project. “If it feels like the pace is accelerating, it’s because it is.”
During a Wednesday hearing of the Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, senators heard from parents who lost children to social media-related harms. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., told the panel, “I think it’s time for us, on a bipartisan basis, to call these CEOs back and to ask them what’s happened in two years, to talk to them about the losses that have occurred and ask them what they’re doing.”
The June 23 date carries weight beyond the committee’s summons. Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., introduced a resolution in 2024 to designate June 23 as Social Media Harms Victim Remembrance Day, encouraging government, industry, and community stakeholders to prevent online harms. The date was chosen by families, including the mothers of Carson Bride, a 16-year-old who died by suicide after severe cyberbullying, and Alexander Neville, a 14-year-old who died after a drug dealer connected with him on Snapchat and sold him the pill that killed him. Both boys died on June 23.