Parents need support to protect children from Big Tech – Senate delivers | Opinion

Eating disorders, sexual exploitation, substance abuse, rising suicide rates among pre-teens and teens—for social media companies, these are just external costs of doing business. While these companies do everything they can to maximize their profits without regard for the health, development, and innocence of children, parents are left in the breach. Parents are left alone on the front lines with no support as they go up against some of the largest corporations in the world who are actively working to recruit children as lifelong users and design their products to be maximally addictive to young brains.

Our laws meant to protect children online are sorely outdated; the last one passed at the federal level was the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act in 1998, long before the invention of smartphones and social media. That means parents have had no effective recourse and tech companies have had little legal accountability when it comes to children.

That is the context in which we should interpret the Senate’s vote last week to pass the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) by a 91-3 vote. The bill is a crucial and urgently needed step forward in the overwhelming bipartisan effort to protect American children online.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), one of the bill’s sponsors, criticized tech executives during a January hearing, saying, “Kids are not your priority, they are your product.” Big Tech’s approach to young users is even worse than that. Tech companies are not only exploiting children by enticing them to offer themselves up for consumption in the digital world to make money for the companies, they are also getting kids hooked. Smartphones and social media are not designed to be used responsibly; they are designed to overpower self-control. Mark Zuckerberg admitted during the same Senate hearing that he wants kids to spend more, not less, time with Meta’s products.

KOSA aims to reorder tech companies’ priorities by requiring them to design their products with the health and safety of children in mind. The bill creates a duty of care that would make online platforms responsible for preventing and mitigating a list of specific harms to minors: promoting suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse, sexual exploitation, and advertising for illegal products to minors like gambling, tobacco, and alcohol. Tech companies would be legally liable and could face lawsuits from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) if they fail to implement these protections.

Until now, Big Tech companies have been allowed to get away with harming children. Consumer protection lawsuits have been dismissed because of case law that expanded the interpretation of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to immunize internet companies not just for third-party content or their moderation decisions, but even for their own misconduct. KOSA helpfully imposes a specific, limited product liability that makes it impossible for tech companies to use Section 230 to avoid liability for the harm they cause.

KOSA gives state attorneys general stronger grounds to file lawsuits against big tech companies, like the lawsuit filed by more than 40 state attorneys general against Meta, which alleges the company violated state consumer protection laws by making its products addictive and then lying about the harm to children’s mental health.

It also gives parents and their children more tools to control their online experiences. It requires social media platforms to give minors options to protect their information, turn off addictive product features, and opt out of personalized algorithmic recommendations. And it requires platforms to enable the strongest privacy settings for children by default and give parents privacy controls and the ability to see how much time their child spends on the platform. All of these provisions are aimed at making children’s social media experiences less addictive, more private, and more transparent for parents.

But the fight is far from over. The bill must be passed by the House of Representatives, and Big Tech lobbyists are doing everything they can to stop it. Big Tech claims the bill violates free speech protections. It tells progressives that KOSA opens the door to censoring LGBTQ content and transgender care, and it tells conservatives that it will be used to censor pro-life efforts. These are all red herrings.

The bill is completely content neutral. It does not address speech at all. KOSA does not give the FTC or states the authority to bring lawsuits over content or speech. In fact, the bill explicitly states that children should be able to view and search the content they want to see. KOSA does not explicitly change Section 230. Instead, it clarifies the law and makes it explicit that it protects companies from liability for the content they host and moderate, but not for the product they designed.

Furthermore, the bill is narrowly targeted at social media platforms. Nonprofit websites are explicitly exempt. Websites created by, for example, a pro-life group or a pro-LGBTQ group to spread their information and message would not be affected at all.

Other conservative groups have argued that the bill undermines parental authority and hands it over to government bureaucrats. It doesn’t. The bill gives parents another tool in their toolbox. It gives parents more power.

It’s rare that we see bipartisan efforts to protect children. Big tech companies are scared and are doing everything they can to fight back and stop it. We can’t let them win. The House needs to do the right thing and bring KOSA to a vote immediately. They have a critical opportunity to further strengthen this bill and get it into law sooner. Parents need them to rise to the occasion.

Clare Morell is director of the Technology and Human Flourishing Project at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Her forthcoming book, The Tech Exit: A Manifesto to Free Our Childrenis published by Penguin Random House.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own.