The U.S. Senate is expected to vote this week on several bills related to online safety for children. A review of the legislation shows good intentions, but not necessarily good policy.
The Kids Online Safety Act - or KOSA - aims at blocking online content that is harmful to children – including content that may cause anxiety or depression. While well-intentioned, the bill defines ‘harmful content’ vaguely, leaving a lot of room for interpretation for whoever is enforcing the legislation – in this case, the Federal Trade Commission. Giving this kind of blank check power to a large federal agency opens the door for government censorship since it will be up to their discretion to determine what content is allowed.
"However, the overly broad definition of harm—which includes more commonplace issues like social anxiety—means that a significant part of online activity could be subject to surveillance. As a result, the surveillance risks associated with KOSA are much higher than they would have been if harms were more narrowly defined."
Mountain States Policy Center believes the concerns are well-justified.
There are better policy proposals that would put parents – not the government - in the driver's seat. One alternative is the Invest in Child Safety Act. This legislation would "direct more than $5 billion in mandatory funding to investigate and target the predators and abusers who create and share child sexual abuse material online. It also directs substantial new funding for community-based efforts to prevent children from becoming victims in the first place."
Our friends at NetChoice also have ideas on how to SHIELD children from online danger.
Policies aimed at giving parents better tools to oversee their kids’ online activity should be a top priority for Congress. But bills such as KOSA raise too many privacy and constitutionality questions to be effective policy.