Montessori Toys and the Business of Vulnerability
A Coda on Careless People
Yesterday, former Meta executive and Careless People author Sarah Wynn-Williams testified before a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee in a hearing titled, “A Time for Truth.” Subcommittee Chair Josh Hawley ran an impressive hearing full of bipartisanship, and you could feel the energy lawmakers have for not letting these outrages by Zuckerberg and Meta stand.
Wynn-Williams was compelling, flush with earnestness and honesty throughout, and shaken when she was asked to recount how Meta’s legal teams have been threatening her around the publication of her book.
This is my job, so I’m happy to watch a hearing, and I will be the first to admit that most are far from gripping. But it was hard to watch this and not feel at first some measure of pride that policymaking in America can still work: the hearing felt much like a dramatic, pivotal scene in a 1990s-era legal film like Erin Brockovitch or A Few Good Men or A Time To Kill, where the hard work was getting the truth out, and a happy-enough resolution is inevitable to follow.
But then, of course, I remembered what those who want legislative change are up against. More to come on that below.
The Wooden Montessori Toys of Silicon Valley
In Wynn-Williams’s testimony was a revelation that should trouble every parent in America. "That was one of the things that shocked me when I moved to Silicon Valley," Wynn-Williams testified, "it's a place full of wooden Montessori toys. And executives would always speak about how they have screen bans in the house."
Just as Meta executives deploy the machinery of a trillion-dollar corporation — what Senator Hawley called "one of the most powerful companies in the history of the world" — to detect and monetize human vulnerability, they simultaneously build walls of wealth and privilege to shield their own families from these same predatory systems.
One machinery exploits; another protects. One for the public; another for them. The hypocrisy is breathtaking. When asked if these same executives allowed their teenagers to use Meta's products, Wynn-Williams recalled their consistent response: "My teenager is not allowed on Facebook. I don't have my teenager on Instagram." Let that sink in. The very people designing platforms that have become ubiquitous in the lives of American children refuse to let their own offspring near them.
It's a damning admission. These executives understand, better than anyone, the harm their products can inflict. As Wynn-Williams put it: "These executives, they know the harm that this product does. They don't allow their own teenagers to use the products that Meta develops."
The question "Would you let your own child use this?" has moral weight precisely because it cuts through corporate spin. When Meta executives create screen-free sanctuaries for their own children while designing products that deliberately exploit other people's kids, they're telling us everything we need to know about those products.
This protection of tech elites' children isn't limited to Meta. Across Silicon Valley, executives and engineers send their children to tech-free schools. They implement strict screen-time limits at home while designing products engineered to maximize engagement and addiction for everyone else's children. It's an open secret in the industry that those who understand these platforms best are the most restrictive with their own families.
The message is clear: there are digital products for the masses, and different standards for the children of the privileged who create them.
What Meta Knows That Users Don't: Targeting the Vulnerable is Profitable
Why would Meta executives ban their children from products they publicly defend? The hearing confirmed one disturbing answer that most of us already know: internal documents show Meta deliberately targets people at their most vulnerable moments.
Senator Hawley displayed an internal Facebook chat where a policy director questioned research into "young mothers and their emotional state." The response confirmed that yes, Facebook was tracking mothers' emotional states to help advertisers target them during moments of distress.
Even more disturbing was Wynn-Williams' testimony about teen targeting: "Facebook was targeting 13 to 17 year olds. It could identify when they were feeling worthless or helpless or like a failure. And they would take that information and share it with advertisers.” Wynn-Williams also described how Meta tracked when teenage girls deleted selfies – a moment of potential insecurity – as "a really good time to try and sell her a beauty product." Senator Blackburn aptly called this "kicking kids when they're down.”
This begs the question that haunts our digital age: Who will protect America's children when the architects of these platforms only protect their own? If even Meta's own executives don't trust their products enough to let their children use them, why should any parent? And if the creators themselves implement "screen bans" and wooden toy sanctuaries, what does that tell us about the true nature of what they've built?
When asked why Meta would pursue such tactics given its trillion-dollar valuation, Wynn-Williams recalled a business leader's chilling response: "We've got the most valuable segment of the population. Advertisers really want to reach 13 to 17 year olds, and we have them. We should be trumpeting it from the rooftops."
The pattern is unmistakable. Meta has built a sophisticated machine to detect and monetize human vulnerability – identifying moments of insecurity, failure, and distress across demographics from teenagers to young mothers. They've engineered systems to exploit these moments of weakness for profit.
No wonder these executives keep their own children safely away. The contrast couldn't be starker. In Silicon Valley homes, children play with wooden Montessori toys under careful screen time limits, protected by parents who understand the digital machinery they've built. Meanwhile, across America, children's vulnerabilities are tracked, quantified, and monetized by that same machinery. This isn't just hypocrisy — it's a profound moral failure that demands an equally profound legislative response.
Moving from righteous indignation to meaningful change, however, requires overcoming the very obstacles Meta has so carefully constructed.
What Comes Next?
Senator Durbin drew a powerful historical parallel after Wynn-Williams mentioned how Meta execs’ children play with “Wooden Montessori Toys.” Decades ago, when fighting the tobacco industry, Durbin relates how the children of tobacco executives became unexpected allies in the battle for regulation. These children, confronted with evidence of their parents' complicity in widespread harm, began questioning: "Dad, tell me that you aren't part of that tobacco conspiracy to keep the truth from the American people," as Durbin said.
Mark Zuckerberg’s eldest child is 9 years old. As kids’ mental health has continued to plummet, as misinformation – accelerated by generative AI – spreads online like kudzu, and with platforms like Meta serving as a handmaiden to authoritarianism, I’m not sure we can wait for that scenario. And as riveting as this hearing was, a similar hearing just over a year ago – when Senator Hawley invited Zuckerberg to apologize to the parents in the room – left the impression that we are on the cusp of action, and as I documented previously, nothing happened.
So, while Senator Durbin’s parallel is hopeful, it also exposes a systemic leadership vacuum. Getting a bill introduced and holding compelling hearings is simply not enough; this generational issue requires legislative leadership that rises above the standard, and we need leaders willing to confront the machinery that protects the privileged while exploiting the public.
In the 1980s, against all odds, Senator Bill Bradley led an unlikely, bipartisan coalition in reforming America's tax code by refusing to accept the status quo, proving that one determined lawmaker can drive monumental change. Working both chambers of Congress with relentless persistence, Bradley built the coalition necessary to eliminate cherished tax loopholes while lowering overall rates—a feat policy experts had dismissed as politically impossible. Bradley's crusade demonstrates that true policy transformation requires not just good ideas and business-as-usual, but a champion willing to invest years of political capital in making the unthinkable become reality.
This was a compelling hearing, but was only a start to what’s necessary to meet the moment, because challenges lie ahead.
To wit:
Beware the bad faith “Free Speech champions” creeping in the shadows. The Kids Online Safety Act, as I detailed in my After Babel post, came a long way last year before, as Senator Blackburn herself put it, “Meta spent millions of dollars lobbying against us and against the legislation,” and I’m hopeful it will come back. But already First Amendment maximalists – people who in essence argue that nearly all human activity is speech, and any regulation that could conceivably relate to speech, is unconstitutional – unsurprisingly have issues with the legislation that could stop it. Of course, these folks don’t show up with suggestions on how to address their concerns; they just say ‘no.’ Lawmakers need a plan for dealing with these people, and to my knowledge, they don’t have one. And even good faith objections get lost in the mess and make this dynamic worse, often because the good faith objectors also fail to offer compromise alternatives. Both Republicans and Democrats fight each other over censorship and the First Amendment – can lawmakers like Senators Hawley and Klobuchar, for example, set aside their differences enough to sort through this issue, protect the First Amendment, and get something meaningful through?
Tech oligarchs in positions of power defending their personal interests. Men like Marc Andreesen – on the Meta board, a distressingly cynical and corrupt figure in Wynn-Williams book, an investor in horrific apps like CharacterAI, and a prominent donor and adviser to the Trump administration – will likely not accept any law passing that impacts his personal investments, and yet he wields enormous influence that he is not afraid to use. Are Republicans and centrist Democrats who have bought into the innovation myths he peddles prepared to resist him and his Silicon Valley friends?
The President as dealmaker and goalkeeper. As both sides of the aisle should be able to agree, President Trump sees himself as a dealmaker, and he frequently surprises both sides with what he believes is a good deal. Are legislators thinking about there something Meta and Zuckerberg could offer him that would block their shot? Are they ready to make the investment in convincing the President that the best deal for America is one that protects kids and neuters Meta’s power? This is existential for any legislative effort on technology, whether KOSA or otherwise, because Zuckerberg and Meta and other tech titans have already shown they have no red lines in what they are prepared to offer governments to make money (see, e.g., the hearings’ discussion on Meta, Zuckerberg, and China).
While watching this hearing, I felt that familiar rush of a pivotal courtroom scene from one of those 1990s legal dramas I mentioned at the beginning – the whistleblower testimony, the damning evidence, the righteous indignation of lawmakers. But unlike a John Grisham adaptation, resolution doesn’t arrive with the credits rolling after the dramatic scene. Instead, this compelling hearing is merely the opening scene.
The harder, less cinematic work comes next. Now we need our Bill Bradley – someone willing to wage the unglamorous, months-long campaign through committee rooms and backroom negotiations, someone who can withstand tech’s lobbying blitz and the inevitable distractions. Senator Hawley's promised bipartisan investigation is promising, but without that Bradley-like figure to carry the fight beyond the dramatic hearings and through to actual legislation, we're left with captivating political theater that changes nothing. The question isn't who can deliver the powerful testimony or ask the incisive questions — we've seen that on display. The question is: who has the stamina, strategic mind, and conviction to see this through when the cameras are off and the hard work begins?
