Children today are never more than a couple of clicks or a handful of taps away from inappropriate content. As a mother and an educator who has spent more than a decade teaching children of all ages, I’ve seen firsthand the harmful effects of social media algorithms, inappropriate online content and other internet dangers on our children.
Thankfully, leaders in Salt Lake City are tackling this issue head-on, and Gov. Spencer Cox has made children’s online safety a top priority of his administration. Under his leadership, the Legislature has passed bills to stop children from accessing pornography websites, and the governor has started a PSA campaign to warn children about social media and other online harms. However, while lawmakers in Utah have taken important steps to keep kids safe online, certain companies responsible for creating dangerous apps are deceptively pushing hard-to-convince elected officials to pass legislation that would undermine their great work to protect children from harmful online content.
Recently, a group of companies led by Facebook has pushed for legislation that would essentially relieve them from the responsibility of getting parental consent and age verification for dangerous apps, including dating apps and social media platforms linked to youth mental health issues. While Facebook claims the proposal to pass the age verification buck to secondary parties like app stores is the cure-all to keep children safe online, the truth is that the measure would do little to protect minors. Instead, the bill amounts to a get-out-of-jail-free card for the companies responsible for endangering their users.
Concerningly, in addition to Facebook, this proposal has gained the support of other businesses with long histories of putting their users and their sensitive data at risk, including companies like TikTok and Match Group, which owns dating apps like Tinder and Hinge and has an issue with underage users being on its platforms.
Why? By shifting the burden of age verification onto other companies, Facebook, TikTok and Match would be free of their responsibility to keep children and teens safe on their platforms, resulting in a dangerous false sense of security for parents and guardians. New evidence has surfaced that apps owned by Facebook show sexualized content to children within minutes of them signing up, and reports indicate that the meager safety protocols used by dating apps have failed to stop underage users from accessing those platforms. Facebook’s proposal would simply allow these bad actors to point the finger elsewhere for their failures.
Additionally, the proposal would mandate other companies to provide companies like Match and Facebook with access to vast troves of users’ private data, putting consumers and their sensitive information in further danger. That would only encourage Facebook to engage in the same kinds of unethical data collection tactics that have landed the company in hot water in the past, and give the green light to Match to continue using consumers’ data in ways that have left many of its users uncomfortable. At the same time, the proposal leaves open an easy loophole children and teenagers could use to access harmful content by simply opening up a web browser to visit dangerous websites on the internet.
These companies pitch this measure to lawmakers by claiming that it would stop children from viewing pornography. However, elected officials in Utah have already passed several restrictions on adult content, including legislation requiring porn websites to verify their users’ ages, a law that caused some of the largest pornography companies to stop providing their content in Utah.
If forcing pornography companies to directly verify users’ ages has been effective at protecting children from adult content, then surely it’s a good solution to stop companies like Facebook and Match from preying on their users. Simply put, lawmakers should not bail out bad actors. Instead, they should target the problem at its source and hold companies like Facebook and Match accountable by requiring them to keep underage users off of their dangerous apps.
Already, lawmakers in some states are doing just that and considering legislation that would require companies that create and provide content that’s inappropriate for children to use age verification technology that is readily available. In the U.S. Senate, for example, a bipartisan group of lawmakers has introduced legislation that would require social media companies to verify the ages of their users and hold them responsible for allowing children to access their platforms, and legislators in some states have introduced bills that mirror this federal social media age verification proposal. Legislators in Utah should follow their lead.
Elected officials should not be fooled by companies trying to evade accountability. Instead, we must hold the businesses harming our children accountable for their own actions.
(Amy Johnston) Amy Johnston is a 17-year veteran teacher in Utah
Amy Johnston is a 17-year veteran teacher in Utah schools and an Excellence in Education award winner.
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