Apologies Don't Protect Kids Online — Laws Do
Congress is waking up to the urgency of ensuring kids' online safety.
Today marks three months since the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing where senators pressed CEOs from five major social media companies — Meta, TikTok, X, Snap, and Discord — about their platforms’ efforts to protect children from sexual exploitation online.
That hearing exposed just how severely Big Tech companies have failed in their promises to protect kids online, despite being warned by internal product managers and external advocacy groups time and time again. The evidence was so overwhelming that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was forced to apologize for his company’s failures.
Yet major legislation to hold Big Tech accountable — like the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) which has now been introduced in both the House and Senate — has yet to receive a vote in Congress. We need Congress to take action now.
Another recent House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing featured members of Congress, experts, and activists showing their support for KOSA and other measures to protect kids online. Congress is confronting the reality of tech platforms’ commitment to put profits over people across the aisle. Here’s what they had to say:
Social media platforms can’t be trusted to act in the best interest of users — especially children. That’s why we need bipartisan legislation like KOSA that would make tech companies design safer platforms for children to ensure a healthy relationship between social media and our communities.
Youth activist Ava Smithing of Young People’s Alliance also shared her devastating experience with social media algorithms feeding her toxic content — a reality that many young people face on a daily basis. These manipulative algorithms promote harmful content that fuels the growing mental health crisis among our kids. Smithing highlights the urgency of reining in Big Tech in her testimony:
KOSA would place the well-being of children before Big Tech profits, establish responsible safeguards by default, and disable addictive features on sites. Here at Issue One, we see these changes as crucial to ensuring a safer and healthier future for our democracy.