{"id":35940,"date":"2023-06-14T17:52:21","date_gmt":"2023-06-14T17:52:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/publicknowledge.org\/?p=35940"},"modified":"2023-06-14T18:12:34","modified_gmt":"2023-06-14T18:12:34","slug":"the-battle-for-control-tiktok-parental-consent-and-the-rights-of-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/publicknowledge.org\/the-battle-for-control-tiktok-parental-consent-and-the-rights-of-children\/","title":{"rendered":"The Battle for Control: TikTok, Parental Consent, and the Rights of Children"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Congratulations, TikTok, for managing to unseat Google, Facebook, and Twitter as Congressional Enemy #1. What started as concerns about national security and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) having too much influence over the platform\u2019s algorithmic design and content moderation has morphed into something different. In the March hearing<\/a> where Shou Zi Chew (TikTok\u2019s CEO) testified in front of Congress, children and teens\u2019 safety, rather than national security, was the focus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This shift was probably inevitable. The government has not disclosed any specific national security concerns; rather, it has focused on possible<\/a> misuses the CCP may engage in. If you are interested in banning<\/a> an app that has 150 million monthly American users<\/a>, you are going to need to be more specific about national security concerns and give a fair hearing about the variety of remedies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the past 10 years, the Center for Disease Control<\/a> has noted a forty percent increase in feelings of sadness and hopelessness \u2014 as well as suicide ideation \u2014 in young people. While the exact cause of this increase is unknown, one common theory links the rate to social media use<\/a>. The Surgeon General has also issued an advisory<\/a> against children and teens using social media; but the advisory acknowledges that social media use has benefits, like improving the mental health of LGBTQ+ teens. While it seems like there might be some causal relationship between mental health and social media, skepticism<\/a> exists about how the relationship works and how substantial the effect is. Instead of waiting for a scientific consensus or working with stakeholders, including teenagers, to craft nuanced and well written laws, legislators have decided to take drastic measures.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the past few years, we\u2019ve seen the public and policymakers’ opinions about tech companies change dramatically<\/a>. This \u201ctechlash\u201d has caused much ink to be spilled, but very few proposals to \u201crein in big tech\u201d have actually made it into law. However, if legislators can show there is a connection between social media use and<\/em> harm to children, then it may be easier to pass laws regulating those entities. While nothing has yet been passed in Congress, state legislatures have been very active in this space. Some of the first activity we saw was states banning TikTok<\/a> on government devices and networks – which included college campus networks. Montana<\/a> went a step further and banned TikTok for everyone. Utah<\/a> has passed a law requiring parental permission for anyone under the age of 18 to use social media and requires social media to be \u201cturned off\u201d for underage users between 10:30 p.m. – 6:30 a.m. Arkansas<\/a> passed a similar law that also requires social media companies to verify the ages of users when a person creates an account. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Laws like these are messaged as being a way to return control back to parents \u2014 and that reasoning has a certain amount of logic to it. We want individual parents to decide what\u2019s best for their children, and requiring parental consent before a child can sign up seems to give parents more control. As a general policy matter, most people believe that parents know what is best for their children. So what could be the problem with requiring parental consent? Setting aside the technical issues with developing a trustworthy and privacy protective age verification and parental consent system, this logic totally devalues the child\u2019s individual right to access information \u2014 particularly older children. While social media is not the only way children can access information, it is a prominent method. Laws like these mean that children will have a harder time coming across new information and encountering different worldviews. The other flaw of this logic is that It assumes the state is just returning rights to the parents, rather than putting its thumb on the scale<\/a> of how all children in their state should be raised, regardless of how individual parents may want to raise their children. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, there are many opportunistic politicians that are reigniting the culture wars for their political advantage. These politicians are more than willing to legislate for “traditional” values, which they see through a lens of devout white, fundamentalist Christians, as opposed to a democracy focused on pluralism, free expression, free speech, and personal liberty where \u201ctraditional\u201d values speech is protected as much as everyone else\u2019s speech. They use their position to impose their belief system on all families \u2014 regardless of religion or political beliefs. We have seen state legislatures banning teaching about racism<\/a> or gender identity and sexuality<\/a>; restricting gender affirming care<\/a> for minors; and even banning<\/a> books<\/a> with topics that they find distasteful. These bans do not protect parents\u2019 rights to raise their children in a manner they see fit, but rather inhibit it and impose a specific belief system on the rest of us, whether we agree with that belief system or not. These legislatures are wielding the power of the \u201cstate\u201d over individual liberty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what does TikTok, or social media generally, have to do with any of this? Social media channels, like public education and local libraries, are viewed as the methods through which \u201cliberal indoctrination<\/a>\u201d occurs. Therefore, in order to stop the spread of these \u201ccontagions<\/a>,\u201d extraordinary measures are required. For example, the Heritage Foundation has publicly stated that they have chosen to support the Kids Online Safety Act because they believe it will keep \u201cchildren away from trans content<\/a>\u201d and prevent them from \u201cpermanently damaging their bodies.\u201d The implicit assumption in these statements is that children only become trans because they are exposed to trans people. Let me be clear: This assumption is false<\/a>. However, it doesn\u2019t matter to elected officials who are hell-bent on destroying our pluralist democracy<\/a>.

Bills regulating social media to protect children\u2019s safety online are not going away. Frankly, most of them are not being proposed in bad faith. Legislators want to do what\u2019s best for children, and social media should not be exempt from regulation that prevents harm. We should be using as many policy levers as possible to make online spaces better and safer for everyone<\/em>. However, in light of this political reality, bills must be stress tested against the likely possibility that they will be weaponized against the very children we are trying to protect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Congratulations, TikTok, for managing to unseat Google, Facebook, and Twitter as Congressional Enemy #1. What started as concerns about national security and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) having too much influence over the platform\u2019s algorithmic design and content moderation has morphed into something different.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":195,"featured_media":35941,"parent":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-35940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insights","tag-platform-regulation"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Battle for Control: TikTok, Parental Consent, and the Rights of Children - Public Knowledge<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The debate over national security concerns for the world's most popular social media app has transformed into one about kid's safety instead.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/publicknowledge.org\/the-battle-for-control-tiktok-parental-consent-and-the-rights-of-children\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Battle for Control: TikTok, Parental Consent, and the Rights of Children\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The debate over national security concerns for the world's most popular social media app has transformed into one about kid's safety instead.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/publicknowledge.org\/the-battle-for-control-tiktok-parental-consent-and-the-rights-of-children\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Public Knowledge\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-06-14T17:52:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-06-14T18:12:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/publicknowledge.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Kids-Online-Safety-1440x720.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1440\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Sara Collins\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Sara Collins\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/publicknowledge.org\/the-battle-for-control-tiktok-parental-consent-and-the-rights-of-children\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/publicknowledge.org\/the-battle-for-control-tiktok-parental-consent-and-the-rights-of-children\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Sara Collins\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/publicknowledge.org\/#\/schema\/person\/121f9a38df070fd2f7119f6cab35cbf5\"},\"headline\":\"The Battle for Control: TikTok, Parental Consent, and the Rights of Children\",\"datePublished\":\"2023-06-14T17:52:21+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-06-14T18:12:34+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/publicknowledge.org\/the-battle-for-control-tiktok-parental-consent-and-the-rights-of-children\/\"},\"wordCount\":1052,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/publicknowledge.org\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/publicknowledge.org\/the-battle-for-control-tiktok-parental-consent-and-the-rights-of-children\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/publicknowledge.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Kids-Online-Safety.png\",\"keywords\":[\"Platform Regulation\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Insights\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/publicknowledge.org\/the-battle-for-control-tiktok-parental-consent-and-the-rights-of-children\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/publicknowledge.org\/the-battle-for-control-tiktok-parental-consent-and-the-rights-of-children\/\",\"name\":\"The Battle for Control: TikTok, Parental Consent, and the Rights of Children - 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