Big tech has gone too far into the lives of children, and some Georgia lawmakers want to push back.

After legal missteps in an effort to rein in the industry, the state Senate received some new recommendations this month from a study committee that heard grim stories about the impact of social media and other platforms.

Among those who testified were parents of kids who died by suicide after committing extensive use of social media and experts who spoke of an escalating mental health crisis following the merger of two technologies.

“Smartphones and social media take the individual who is vulnerable, who is having a mental struggle, and further isolate and distance them from real human relationships,” Dr. Stan Sonu, a medical director at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, told the senators at a hearing at the state Capitol in November.

He described a patient who became withdrawn over the past year, burying his head in TikTok videos. He said the boy had high scores for anxiety, depression, and thoughts of self-harm despite a pleasant demeanor.

Sonu said at first he dismissed the changed behavior and attributed it to teen angst. Then, the 12-year-old revealed to her what had been bothering him: other boys had made him watch sex videos in the school cafeteria, bullying him later because of his discomfort.

Sonu said the boy had been self-medicating through social media.

“Social media is, and I don’t say this lightly, it is legalized digital heroin,” Sonu told the senators. “By using neuroscience to get a grip on our attention, it encourages this very powerful use of our brains that we can push aside our real-life problems.”

The committee is picking up the pieces following the tech industry’s torpedoing of the General Assembly’s last attempt to rein in social media.

The Protecting Georgia’s Children on Social Media Act sailed into law, with broad, bipartisan support, last year, but an advocacy group for tech companies sued.

A federal judge for the Northern District of Georgia decided in June that the plaintiff was expected to prevail on the grounds that the law violated the First Amendment’s speech protections. She issued a preliminary injunction against enforcement.

The law required social media companies to make “commercially reasonable efforts” to verify users’ age, and to require parent consent in the case of users under age 16. It also prohibited advertising to children.

It was a priority of Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a Republican running for a chance at the governor’s office.

Jones authorized the bipartisan committee, co-chaired by a Democrat and a Republican, that issued new legislative recommendations in late December.

The committee recommended a ban on addictive platform design, enhanced data protection, and subjecting artificial intelligence platforms to product liability laws.

The committee also supported measures to empower parents, including a proposal that social media companies get parent consent before letting minors access their platforms. But that would amount to age verification by everyone, similar to the mandate that led the federal judge to keep last year’s law on hold on the belief it was a “severe burden” on adults to have to prove they were the age they claimed.

The committee also suggested adding to a measure taking effect next fall, a ban on student use of personal digital devices in public elementary and middle schools. The committee recommended that the ban be extended to high schools.