Keeping teens safe online doesn’t require stifling overprotection 

The Senate is considering two bills related to children’s privacy: the Kids Online Safety Act and the Children and Teens Online Privacy Protection Act. Mounting evidence reveals how some young people have been harmed by social media, and activists have sought to push legislation to protect them from the worst effects. 

The question, though, should be how to do that without both limiting the advantages the internet has to offer kids and curtailing free speech.

More specifically, Congress’ impetus is evidence that many teens spend too much time online and are experiencing negative psychological consequences. Problems also result from their being exposed to websites and online ads that promote things such as drug abuse, alcohol, harmful body images, dating services and gambling.

Complicating matters is that online resources also play an important and beneficial role in the lives of children and teens all over the world by providing educational opportunities, enabling them to communicate with friends and extended family and providing a source of entertainment. Access is largely dependent on digital advertising, which provides the revenue to compensate publishers for providing free and low-cost services to consumers.

Both bills include a key provision that would increase the age of those entitled to special privacy protection to 16. Because prior law already applies to children under 13, each would mainly affect people in their early teens. The earlier law — the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act — reflected a consensus in 1998 that children under 13 are incapable of making good decisions about online activities without parental supervision. That’s why the law today already requires parental permission for websites to collect, use or disclose children’s data.

The Kids Online Safety Act holds platforms liable if their design and services do not try to mitigate various social consequences such as depression, eating disorders and sexual exploitation. In doing so, it invents what one group of tech experts calls new “categories of harm that encompass content definitively protected by the First Amendment.” It also effectively gives the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general authority to regulate what content platforms show to minors. Can we trust these officials to make the right determinations, without political motivations? This partly explains why numerous organizations oppose one or both bills on the grounds that they interfere with free speech.

One related data privacy concern is that the proposals effectively require age verification. While various forms of age verification are common, true verification could require potentially sensitive personally identifying information from all users. Although the current version states that platforms are not required to verify the age of their users, it’s likely the only way to block minors from accessing content which would subject a company to liability.

The Children and Teens Online Privacy Protection Act would eliminate opportunities for teens to benefit from exchanging their data for online services, notably when it comes to personalized advertisements. Teens are old enough to exercise at least some discernment with advertising, with problems arising from specific, harmful products and services. Most goods and services advertised online are not harmful. If online companies cannot profit from fairly benign forms of data collection tied to targeted advertising, minors could be denied worthwhile online services geared not just toward entertainment or social interaction, but also education or mental or physical health. 

The same year Congress passed these bills’ predecessor, it enacted legislation that would have required platforms to take steps to protect minors from sexually explicit content. That legislation was struck down by the courts because more effective (and less restrictive) alternatives were available. One of these alternatives was internet content filtering technology. Content filtering may not be as effective as it once was, but reliable parental control software is available and worth considering.

Rather than governments imposing draconian obligations on platforms in ways that are likely to restrict teens’ access to quality information, parents and teachers need to guide and supervise young people as they learn to make good online decisions. Using tools to filter out harmful content is better than the government broadly defining and restricting adolescents’ access to whatever it deems harmful.

While some changes to the legal landscape might be reasonable, parents are in the best position to decide how much autonomy to allow kids as they get closer to adulthood. Any additional government policies will be more effective if our lawmakers remember this.

Tracy C. Miller is a senior research editor with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.