Congress today is grilling the chief executives of several big tech companies, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, about potential harms from their products on teens.

Until now, the social platforms have largely had the same response: We’ll help teens and families make smart decisions themselves.

But with growing claims that social media can hurt young users, including worries that it risks driving them to depression or even suicide, online safety advocates say that response falls far short. And with a presidential election looming — and state lawmakers stealing the spotlight from their federal counterparts — Congress is set to press tech companies to go beyond the tools they’ve rolled out in the past.

Many of the tech CEOs are likely to use Wednesday’s hearing to tout tools and policies to protect children and give parents more control over their kids’ online experiences.

However, parents and online safety advocacy groups say many of the tools released by social media platforms don’t go far enough — largely leaving the job of protecting teens up to parents and, in some cases, the young users themselves — and that tech platforms can no longer be left to self-regulate.

“What the committee needs to do is to push these executives to commit to major changes, especially to disconnect their advertising and marketing systems from services that are known to attract and target youth,” said Jeff Chester, executive director of online consumer protection nonprofit the Center for Digital Democracy.