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Social Media


PROTECTING KIDS ON SOCIAL MEDIA ACT CLOAKS ATTACK ON PRIVACY BEHIND CONCERN FOR
CHILDREN


THERE ARE ALREADY PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE FOR REGULATING CHILDREN’S ONLINE ACTIVITY:
PARENTS AND GUARDIANS.

J.D. Tuccille | 9.1.2023 7:00 AM

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(Evgenyatamanenko | Dreamstime.com)

There's seemingly no policy turd that lawmakers are unwilling to polish in the
name of "the children." That brings us to the Protecting Kids on Social Media
Act, currently working its way through the U.S. Senate. This measure borrows bad
proposals from another federal bill and combines them with legislative idiocy
enacted at the state level. The resulting concoction could destroy internet
privacy, subjecting all our online activity to government scrutiny in the name
of shielding wee ones from harm.

The Rattler is a weekly newsletter from J.D. Tuccille. If you care about
government overreach and tangible threats to everyday liberty, this is for you.

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Δ


A BIPARTISAN COMBINATION OF BAD IDEAS

Sponsored by Sen. Brian Schatz (D–Hawaii) and co-sponsored by Sen. Tom Cotton
(R–Ark.), Sen. Chr Murphy (D-Conn.), and Sen. Katie Boyd Britt (R-Ala.) among
others, the Protecting Kids on Social Meda Act generates the sort of cross-aisle
consensus that generally only accompanies terrible ideas. The bill "contains
elements of the dangerous Kids Online Safety Act as well as several ideas pulled
from state bills that have passed this year, such as Utah's surveillance-heavy
Social Media Regulations law," write the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF)
Jason Kelley and Sophia Cope.

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The Kids Online Safety Act, which has 43 cosponsors in the Senate, "ham-handedly
aims to shield children and teenagers from vaguely defined dangers lurking on
the internet," Jacob Sullum noted earlier this month. "The unintended but
foreseeable results are apt to include invasions of privacy that compromise
First Amendment rights and a chilling impact on constitutionally protected
speech, both of which will harm adults as well as the 'kids' whom the bill is
supposed to protect."

Likewise, "under the new Utah laws, social media companies will have to check
the ages of new and existing Utah account holders—which of course means
collecting and storing identifying information about every Utah user," Elizabeth
Nolan Brown summarized in March. "That leaves people's personal information
vulnerable to hackers, government snoops, unscrupulous tech employees, and
more."

The Protecting Kids on Social Media Act doubles down on bureaucratic control and
surveillance of internet activity. As the title of the legislation suggests, its
authors find substituting restrictive laws for parental responsibility in the
name of shielding children from danger a convenient excuse for imposing controls
that people would be unlikely to tolerate under any other circumstance.

According to EFF:

> The Protecting Kids on Social Media Act has five major components:
> 
>  * Mandate that social media companies verify the ages of all account holders,
>    including adults
>  * Ban on children under age 13 using social media at all
>  * Mandate that social media companies obtain parent or guardian consent
>    before minors over 12 years old and under 18 years old may use social media
>  * Ban on the data of minors (anyone over 12 years old and under 18 years old)
>    being used to inform a social media platform's content recommendation
>    algorithm
>  * Creation of a digital ID pilot program, instituted by the Department of
>    Commerce, for citizens and legal residents, to verify ages and
>    parent/guardian-minor relationships


THE END OF ONLINE ANONYMITY

It's tempting to conclude that the digital ID pilot program is the real warhead
in this particular legislative weapon, since lawmakers and pundits often fret
over online anonymity. The bill provides a clear path towards linking internet
activity to identities so that, for example, politicians could identify their
critics.

"Not later than 2 years after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary
of Commerce (referred to in this section as the 'Secretary') shall establish a
pilot program (referred to in this Act as the 'Pilot Program') for providing a
secure digital identification credential to individuals who are citizens and
lawful residents of the United States at no cost to the individual," reads the
text of the bill. The program will "allow individuals to verify their age, or
their parent or guardian relationship with a minor user, by uploading copies of
government-issued and other forms of identification" or through "electronic
records of State departments of motor vehicles, the Internal Revenue Service,
the Social Security Administration, State agencies responsible for vital
records, or other governmental or professional records providers…."



The bill contains assurances that users will be able to control and delete their
information. But it's a government program; take those promises with a grain of
salt. The largest grain of salt accompanies claims that use of the digital ID
program will remain voluntary and confined to age verification.

"It's unlikely that age and parental status verification would be its only use
after its creation," warn EFF's Kelley and Cope. "Congress could easily change
the law with future bills. Just look at the Social Security Number–once upon a
time, it was only meant to allow Americans to participate in the federal
retirement program. Even the Social Security Administration admits that the
number 'has come to be used as a nearly universal identifier.'" (That admission
can be found here.)


REGULATING ADULTS IN THE NAME OF PROTECTING KIDS

The rest of the bill is largely an exercise by the bill's sponsors in using
government force to impose rules on minors' online activity that parents either
can't be bothered to apply themselves or choose not to enforce because they
flat-out disagree with the lawmakers over what rules are appropriate. That
includes the total ban on those under 13 using social media along with parental
consent and age-verification requirements for users between 13 and 18 years of
age. Of course, you have to check everybody's ID to know who is underage.

"The problems inherent in age verification systems are well known," write Kelley
and Cope. "All age verification systems are identity verification systems and
surveillance systems. All age verification systems also impact all users because
it's necessary to confirm the age of all people in order to keep out one select
age group. This means that every social media user would be subjected to
potentially privacy-invasive identity verification if they want to use social
media."


GOVERNMENT PUSHES PARENTS OUT OF THE WAY

Minus the "for the children" marketing pitch, legislation like this is a hard
sell in anything resembling a free society. Most people would be hesitant to
submit themselves to government identification and surveillance of their online
activity. But few people want to be seen as callous towards kids, so "for the
children" is an effective sales spiel for bad ideas—including bureaucratic rules
and intrusive privacy violations.



But here's the thing: There are already people responsible for regulating
children's online activity in the form of parents and guardians. Adults can set
screen time limits for kids, check their browser histories, or just take their
devices away and send them outside to play. If they don't assert their authority
in exactly the way some lawmakers might like, so be it. Free people get to raise
their kids by their rules; they aren't bound by the preferences of meddling
neighbors or presumptuous legislators.

Sen. Schatz and friends say that they want to protect children from the dangers
of social media. But if we want to preserve a free society for generations to
come, what we really need to shield our kids from are lawmakers who cloak
authoritarian proposals behind facades of concern.

The Rattler is a weekly newsletter from J.D. Tuccille. If you care about
government overreach and tangible threats to everyday liberty, this is for you.

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Δ

NEXT: Review: Wonder Boy Chronicles the Life and Death of Former Zappos CEO Tony
Hsieh

J.D. Tuccille is a contributing editor at Reason.

Social MediaPrivacyInvasion of PrivacyCensorshipInternetFree SpeechParental
RightsChildren
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