How New Regulation on Big Tech Could Provide Better Child Safety Online In Response to the #KIDSTOO Movement

Over the last two decades, the evolution of technology and the internet has improved our lives in many ways. Through devices like iPhones, tools for productivity and games for entertainment can be accessed at our fingertips. In addition, tech has enabled us to be a more connected society, globally, taking what began as a chat feature on AOL and adapting it to the popular social media platforms of our choosing to facilitate these connections.However, while tech has highlighted many new ways of working and communicating, it has also become apparent that tech use has a dark side. Its cracks have been showing up through the harassment that social media has created for users.  In October 2020, for example, the Pew Research Center conducted a survey of U.S. adults and found that about two-thirds (64%) of Americans say social media has a mostly negative effect on the way things are going in our country today. 

While social media may have been off-putting to many adults in the U.S., the opposite is true for children.  According to a 2021 study conducted by Thorn, social media use among kids has been on the rise. While most social media platforms have a minimum entry point of age 13, younger tech-savvy kids are easily finding work-arounds to set up accounts, remove blocking features, and keep it under wraps from their parents or caregiver. 

The dangers to children from ever-expanding technology have been building for at least the last two decades, with little regulation in place to protect kids online. It took the COVID-19 pandemic to expose the magnitude of child exploitation happening in our country, as more than 21.7 million cases of inappropriate incidents have been reported to the CyberTipline (run by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children) in the last couple of years. This tragedy has developed primarily as a result of the pervasive child sexual abuse happening on well-known media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok and Instagram, to name just a few.  

Social media users who are predators regularly scan social profiles to identify vulnerable kids, use DM and chat features to reach out to them, and then utilize grooming tactics to lure the kids into lude acts online—or even to move the activity offline into in-person contact. Furthermore, kids are being exposed to explicit material online far more frequently than they could even imagine—for example, more than half (56%) of children between ages 11 and 16 have seen inappropriate content such as:

• Child sexual abuse material (CSAM)
• Sexism
• Swearing and other profanity
• Sites that encourage crime, racism, terrorism, eating disorders, and even suicide
• Depictions of cruelty toward animals or humans
• Gambling
• Unmoderated chat rooms with explicit conversations

While Big Tech has tried to do its part by giving users tools to do the reporting, no platform will ever deploy enough resources (such as AI and content moderators) to filter all of the inappropriate (and often illegal) content published on these platforms. Additionally, there have even been news headlines about content moderators suffering from PTSD as a result of their exposure to graphic and violent imagery while on the job.

Though the situation can feel like a daunting problem to fix, the #KIDSTOO movement and other child advocacy organizations are optimistic. A bill called the EARN IT Act of 2022 (Eliminating Abuse and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies) would revise the federal framework governing the prevention of online sexual exploitation of children. Here’s what it will do if it becomes law:

• It establishes a new National Commission on Online Child Sexual Exploitation Prevention. Technology changes so rapidly; this commission will work to ensure that child protection safety measures remain in place even as tech continually evolves. 
• It updates existing federal statutes with more current and accurate language, replacing “child pornography” with “child sexual abuse material.” This strengthens the CyberTipline and allows companies to take further steps to improve detection and response to CSAM.
• It creates corporate accountability by amending the CDA Section 230 to carve out federal and state CSAM laws. Survivors as well as the parents of exploited children will be able to hold tech companies accountable for the distribution of child sexual abuse material.

According to Tania Haigh, founder of the #KIDS TOO Movement and co-founder of Parents Against Child Sex Abuse (P.A.X.A.), “We are ringing alarm bells to protect children, both in online and offline environments. For the last two decades, social media platforms have placed the onus solely and completely on parents to keep children safe, but we cannot do it alone. The EARN IT Act is one measure designed to get these billion-dollar tech companies to stop protecting predators and start helping parents.”

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