Guest Author
As states across the nation grapple with the rise of social media, a generation whose formative years occurred during an isolating national pandemic, and the very real harm that children have experienced online, we have found ourselves with a patchwork of regulations across multiple states.
This patchwork approach has led to a push at the federal level to implement a uniform policy to protect children online.
One of these initiatives is the proposed Kids Online Safety Act, which supporters say will protect children from harmful material online. As important as it is to keep our kids safe online, proposals like KOSA would have us do so at the expense of not just the kids we’re trying to protect, but all users online.
Central to all online safety legislation are two challenges: determining a user’s age and protecting underage users while preserving their First Amendment rights, and the rights of adult users.
KOSA proponents have argued that platforms should have all the information they need to determine users’ ages, but that’s not necessarily true. Heuristics (implementing user data to estimate age) would likely not meet the level of legal scrutiny needed to satisfy KOSA, and there would be serious consequences on platforms that fail to comply fully.
Platforms will have to opt for a solution with less exposure to liability, which is to say they will be compelled to either deplatform user speech or adopt a more in-depth, invasive age-verification scheme rather than guessing users’ ages.
There are also massive constitutional problems with how KOSA would accomplish its goals. KOSA would allow the government to moderate speech and control who can access it, threatening First Amendment protections by having the government dictate what is appropriate for viewing on the internet.
This issue is politically agnostic — groups like NetChoice and the ACLU, along with major tech companies such as Google, have long proposed parents-first solutions that will preserve privacy and avoid one-size-fits-all government fiats that might do more harm than good.
Whether you align with the current majority party or not, pushing KOSA forward would allow future administrations with different philosophies to potentially censor content that they find objectionable. Moreover, children and adults have the same First Amendment rights to access constitutionally protected speech online, yet KOSA might unduly restrict access for both.
Child safety is certainly a compelling government interest, but rather than seeking to impose broad federal restrictions on online platforms in the name of child safety, policymakers should be placing parents at the heart of this challenge, empowering them with the tools and skills they need to help their children navigate a rapidly evolving, ever-changing online world.
In addition, children themselves should be educated on the dangers they might encounter online.
KOSA’s approach, on the other hand, is flawed from the outset because it is inherently incapable of accounting for the vast natural differences between individual children and because it denies children important opportunities to learn and grow through interaction with the online world at large.
Crucially, in imposing sweeping restrictions on the kinds of online content children can view and engage with, and by allowing what amounts to government censorship of content, KOSA limits their ability to grow through exposure to the broader world.
Luckily, there are alternative proposals that preserve First Amendment rights, provide tools for parents, and education for children. This is the levelheaded thinking we need both in Washington and in Tallahassee.
The internet is more central to our cultural discourse now than ever before, and children deserve every opportunity to benefit from its use and the vast wealth of knowledge available to them online.
Only by empowering parents with the skills and tools they need to help their children navigate the online world can we keep our kids safe while allowing them to reap the greatest benefit.
___
Jared Willis is a consultant with The Mayernick Group.
