OPINION:
The American people have heard a lot from their elected representatives about the need to protect children online. No serious person disagrees with that sentiment. The more our lives take place online, the greater the potential for harm as well as good. Unfortunately, the proposals coming from Congress not only read like the homework of a kid cutting corners to get back to playing video games; they also have a real likelihood of making kids less safe online. Unable to navigate the collision of philosophical principles and policy specifics, our lawmakers have drafted a bill that greatly undermines children’s online privacy while placing an out-of-control Federal Trade Commission, with zero relevant child development expertise, in charge of speech on the internet. That bill is called the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA).
KOSA has been circulating for years, and the sponsors of the legislation have attempted that entire time to outmaneuver criticism of their bill. Unfortunately, as so often happens, that maneuvering has been political and not substantive. As such, concerns related to censorship, politicized enforcement, and the First Amendment remain. The element that doesn’t get enough attention is the near certainty that if passed this child safety bill will undermine child safety.
KOSA leaves platforms with no other choice than to collect massive amounts of personally identifiable information from every single one of their users. That’s because, to avoid penalties in the law, platforms have to prove that they took steps to know who is and isn’t a minor. This de facto collection and storage of children’s information is a gold mine for scammers and predators. When a California law, similar to KOSA, was blocked by a judge, she raised the same concern, stating that age verification measures were likely “to exacerbate the problem” of children’s privacy. Around the country, in states like California, Utah, Ohio, Arkansas, and Mississippi, KOSA-copycats are being put on hold by judges who recognize that the policy “solutions” inside those bills are no solution at all.
This gets to the fundamental concern regarding the entire debate around KOSA. If protecting children online is such a major priority for lawmakers, they should act like it. If there is a genuine crisis of mental and emotional wellbeing in this country, then we should be marshaling the resources necessary to tackle that problem. Instead, we have politicians advancing ideas that they already know won’t work. They’ve already seen the courts step in to block similar bills. By now, lawmakers should have learned from that experience, convened relevant stakeholders, and shifted their legislation away from constitutional and privacy issues and towards solutions that would deal directly with mental health and child exploitation.
Tellingly, nothing in the bill sends resources to law enforcement or mental health professionals, so the bill cannot reasonably be interested in shifting safety outcomes for children. Instead, the bill is stuck on an unconstitutional path to bully companies into censoring speech and violating the privacy of every American including children.
KOSA wants to solve major social problems. To do that, it imagines those problems as simple and straightforward, to its detriment. Privacy, speech, safety, law enforcement, and mental health are all multifaceted issues that demand complex solutions and broad buy-in from public and private actors. Trying to get around doing this kind of hard work is what is expected of children, not the elected leaders purportedly trying to protect them.
SPECIAL COVERAGE: Parents Matter: Protecting Our Children in a Digital Age
• Patrick Hedger is the executive director of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, a nonprofit, nonpartisan taxpayer and consumer watchdog group.
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