While all of Silicon Valley’s major social media companies, from Instagram to TikTok, say they prevent kids from using their apps, these senators say those efforts have failed.
“It’s not working,” says Schatz. “There is no right to free speech to be stuck with an algorithm that annoys you, and these algorithms are increasingly polarizing us, putting us down, depressed and angry with each other. And it’s bad enough that it’s happening to all of us adults, the least we can do is protect our children.”
While the measure is sponsored by progressive Democrats and one of the most fervent conservatives in the Senate, lawmakers across the ideological spectrum are equally skeptical of the proposal, showing the difficult road ahead to pass any new media measure. , including those aimed at children. Many lawmakers are torn between protecting children online and preserving the robustness of the Internet as we know it. Naturally, most senators look to their own families for guidance.
“My grandchildren have flip phones. They don’t have smartphones until they get old,” says Sen. Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican. Romney, who is open to the idea, though initially hesitant, says there isn’t even uniformity in his own family on these issues.
“I have five children, so there are five different families and they have different approaches,” says Romney. “And the youngest son is the strictest, and the oldest son didn’t really think it was that important.”
For Smith, the Minnesota senator was concerned that her party would look like Big Sister, there wasn’t even uniformity in her own home when her children were fighting over the family’s first desktop computer a long time ago. And her children also turned out to be (mini) hackers.
“We were trying to figure out how to monitor their interactions with the computer, and we quickly realized that, at least for them, it was hard to put down hard and fast rules, because kids find a way,” Smith says. “And different parents have different rules about what they think is the right thing to do for their kids.”
While Smith is open to the new move, she remains cautious. “I guess I’m a little suspicious of hard and fast rules, because I’m not sure they work and because I think parents and kids should have the freedom to decide what’s best for their family. says Smith.
While Smith is a progressive Democrat, in this new measure, she is currently aligned with Sen. Rand Paul, a libertarian-leaning Kentucky Republican. “Parents exercise some supervision over what their children see on the Internet, what they see on television, all of these things are important. I’m not sure I love the federal government [involved]says Paul.
The new measure also has jurisdiction. Last week, Senators Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, resubmitted their EARN IT Law—The Law for the Elimination of Abusive and Uncontrolled Negligence of Interactive Technologies. That measure would remove the current Section 230 protections for any site that posts child sexual exploitation content online. Section 230 remains a highly controversial law because it shields online businesses from liability for much of what their users post on their platforms.
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