By Ralph Ellis, WebMD News Brief
United States Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) introduced a bill on Wednesday that would require online platforms such as Facebook to give parents more control over their children’s online experience.
The Kids Online Safety Act of 2022 would:
- Require online platforms to stop content promoting self-harm, suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse, and sexual exploitation.
- Give parents of children under 16 tools to protect them, such as methods to opt out of algorithmic recommendations, limit screen time, and spot harmful behaviors.
- Prevent third parties from accessing data about minors.
- Give academic researchers and non-profit organizations access to social media database platforms so they could research whether the well-being of minors is threatened.
- Require online platforms to publish independent audits that assess risks to minors.
“What we’ve seen is gut-wrenchingly a sense of powerlessness, a loss of control from kids themselves,” Blumenthal said during a Wednesday news conference, according to The Washington Post. “What we’re doing in this bill is empowering those children and their parents to take back control and the power over their lives online.”
“In hearings over the last year, Senator Blumenthal and I have heard countless stories of physical and emotional damage affecting young users, and Big Tech’s unwillingness to change,” Blackburn said in a news release. “The Kids Online Safety Act will address those harms by setting necessary safety guiderails for online platforms to follow that will require transparency and give parents more peace of mind.”
Some social media companies such as Instagram have already introduced some of these safety measures.
Interest in how online activity affects children increased after a former Facebook employee released documents showing Instagram knew the app caused mental health problems in young users. Facebook, now called Meta, owns Instagram.
The internal research released by the whistleblower showed that the platform made body image issues worse for 1 in 3 teenage girls, and 14% of teenage boys said Instagram made them feel worse about themselves.
The existing law on children’s online privacy, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, was passed in 1998 and applies only to children younger than 13, The Washington Post said. It was written before Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other online platforms were created.