New bipartisan legislation limiting the age of children and teenagers on social media strips authority away from parents and gives it to the government instead, the industries affected by the bill say.
Sens. Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Tom Cotton (R-AK) introduced the Protecting Kids on Social Media Act on Wednesday. The bill would set a minimum age of 13 for users to be allowed to have accounts on social media apps such as Instagram or TikTok, while users between the ages of 13 and 17 would require parental approval. It would also limit the algorithmic content promotion to users 18 or younger and launch a pilot program to establish a federal digital ID system for confirming user identities.
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The bill has bipartisan support in the Senate, meaning it is a serious proposal for the industry to reckon with. Groups representing the tech industry in Washington are arguing that it is a threat to user privacy and parental rights.
“Being a parent in the twenty-first century is hard, but inserting the government between parents and their teens is the wrong approach,” NetChoice Vice President and General Counsel Carl Szabo said in a statement. NetChoice is a right-leaning tech industry group that advocates for Silicon Valley.
The bill’s proposed pilot identification program would require more extensive data collection and storage in order to be effective, according to Szabo. For example, it could lead to Facebook requiring a copy of a user’s government-issued ID to receive an account. It would also mean that any Big Tech client would need either to have access to the data or collect the data.
Cotton dismissed such concerns. “Age verification online is done every day,” the Arkansas Republican said at a Wednesday press conference. “It’s not hard. It’s not complicated.” He noted that the federal government regularly collected such data through websites including IDme, which is also used for functions such as accessing pornography in Louisiana.
Some parental groups have slammed the bill for overextending government power and limiting parental choice through the age limits. “Congress should place the onus on companies to make the internet safer for kids and teens and avoid placing the government in the middle of the parent-child relationship,” James Steyer, Common Sense Media CEO, said in a statement. Common Sense regularly advocates on digital issues for parents.
“I’m not sure how anyone can argue that a bill which would give parents more control actually strips parents of their rights instead,” a staffer from Cotton’s office told the Washington Examiner. “Totally backwards. The whole purpose of the bill is to empower parents to protect their children online.”
Other industry voices argue that the bill would harm children in less-than-supportive homes. “This bill threatens the millions of teens who live in households without supportive parents, for whom online communities are often a refuge,” Chamber of Progress CEO Adam Kovacevich said in a statement. This threat would limit the ability of companies to provide age-friendly content, Kovacevich argued, as well as make it hard for teenagers seeking support in abusive homes, such as reaching out to nonprofit organizations to get help escaping an abusive parent.
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The bill was introduced as a “commonsense and bipartisan approach to help stop this suffering” of teenagers experiencing social media-related mental health issues, Schatz said at a press conference.
“By instituting these simple, straightforward guidelines, we’ll be able to give the next generation of children what every parent wants for their child, which is a chance to grow up happy and healthy,” the Hawaii Democrat added.
