Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg (center right) addresses an audience that included parents of children who have been injured or gone missing in social media-related incidents during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington, DC, USA, Wednesday, January 31, 2024. Photo by Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg via Getty Images
In what was a dramatic weekend for President Joe Biden, who dropped out of the presidential race and confirmed Vice President Kamala Harris as his Democratic successor, the White House kicked off the week by releasing a series of guidance, educational materials and recommendations aimed at improving children’s online safety. The Senate quickly followed suit, with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announcing on Tuesday that he would take up two child online safety bills for a floor vote later this week after months of stalling.
The Kids Online Health and Safety (KOHS) Task Force, launched in May 2023 as part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s efforts to address the “youth mental health crisis” and strengthen protections for children online, released a groundbreaking report on Monday outlining best practices and guidance to do just that. Among other things, the report identifies the key risks and benefits of social media to the health, safety, and privacy of young users, provides educational tools and best practices for families who use social media, outlines the tech industry’s role in protecting young people online, and sets out a research agenda to further study online harms and their impact on children.
At the top of the report’s recommendations for the industry is to create “age-appropriate experiences” that take into account children’s different circumstances and experiences. Overall, the report encourages designing services that “similarly prioritize the health, safety, and privacy of all users, regardless of age,” but acknowledges that designing “different experiences for different age groups of participants” may require platforms to estimate users’ ages through either “age guarantee” or “age verification” mechanisms. These tools are often criticized as intrusive and privacy-invasive. But in return, they may prevent children from accessing potentially harmful online content, such as pornography.
A list of 10 best practices that the Children’s Online Health and Safety Task Force recommends online service providers adopt.
“What this report really says is that instead of telling companies what to do, we say this is what we think they should do,” Federal Trade Commission Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya said at a White House press conference about the task force’s new efforts. “We’re not saying what these content recommendations should be, but we think that as a design feature, they should be turned off for young people,” he said. Those “by design default” features, Bedoya said, could include turning off infinite scrolling and autoplay for younger users, and tightening privacy settings to stop strangers from harassing kids with sounds they can hear.
The report also includes a set of strategies for parents and guardians to help their children navigate social media and mitigate harms. For example, the Center of Excellence on Social Media and Youth Mental Health, run by the American Academy of Pediatrics and funded by the Office of Drug Abuse and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, has released educational materials to help families develop a “media plan” to “manage expectations and build consensus for all family and household members regarding media use.”
“These will be critical so families can work together to craft a shared understanding and plan for social media time,” SAMHSA Administrator Miriam Delphine Ritmon said at a press conference. The educational materials include new age-specific handouts and a set of “conversation starters” that pediatricians can distribute to parents to engage children in discussions about technology use.
Bedoya said the report’s research agenda is also “very useful,” especially from a law enforcement perspective. Research that focuses on specific design features and establishes direct harm is “a great way to improve the quality of life of a person.” [the FTC] “You have to prove causation in a particular case and in particular circumstances,” Bedoya said.
The FTC has been serious about going after tech companies that exploit children who use their products and services. Earlier this month, the FTC banned NGL Labs from offering its anonymous messaging app to users under the age of 18, citing a series of concerns about deceptive marketing practices and false claims about an AI content moderation program that purported to filter cyberbullying and harmful messages.
The KOHS report concludes with a set of steps for policymakers, including calling on Congress to enact federal legislation to protect the health, safety, and privacy of adolescents online, voluntary enforcement of “age-appropriate” best practices by platforms, and providing independent researchers access to platform data while maintaining user privacy. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) announced it would lead an effort to draft guidelines for companies implementing researcher access programs and for legislators drafting privacy legislation.
The task force’s recommendations to Congress come amid continuing frustration over the stalling of bipartisan legislation in the Senate this session. The Child Online Safety Act (KOSA), which would require social media companies to take “duty of care” steps to better protect children on their platforms, was never introduced in Congress despite having the support of roughly 70 Senate cosponsors.
But after a series of setbacks, Senator Schumer plans to bring both KOSA and COPPA 2.0 to the floor for a termination vote later this week after working with Committee Chair Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and sponsors of the bills to prepare for passage, according to a statement from his office. [these bills] “Passing legislation could change and save lives, and today we’re one step closer to succeeding,” Schumer said in a statement. The vote comes less than two weeks before Congress recesses.
Advocates are rallying together in opposition to senators’ desire to pass KOSA. On Thursday, more than 300 high school students will head to the Capitol to lobby against the bill, citing concerns it will cut off young people’s access to important online resources about gender identity, race, and reproductive health. According to a press release, the “student-led advocacy effort” marks the culmination of the ACLU’s National Advocacy Institute. The week-long effort will provide first-hand experience for “the next generation of social justice advocates.”
One point made by officials who worked on the report was that industry could implement all 10 of the recommendations right now. “Many other countries are implementing these recommendations because they require industry to do so, and there’s no reason why the United States can’t do it too,” National Telecommunications and Information Administration Administrator Alan Davidson said at a news conference. “We’re hopeful that domestic industry will be more proactive.”
