Decency – Family Council

Protecting Kids Online: Guest Column

Sep 24, 2024Jerry CoxDecencyChild Welfare, Decency, Facebook, Instagram, Social Media, TikTok

This summer, the U.S. Senate passed a pair of bills: the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0). Each garnered major bipartisan support, passing by an overwhelming margin of 91 to 3. If the bills are passed by the House, they will be the first major legislation aimed at protecting kids online in over two decades.

The laws originally intended to govern the internet were passed over 20 years ago. These laws were mostly aimed at email exchanges and could never have anticipated the scope and scale of technology today. Not only is the internet used for everything from delivering groceries to running a business, but it is also the epicenter of our worst addictions, from social media to pornography, with algorithms that are incredibly effective at keeping people online.

Heavy screen time has proven especially harmful for young people, with effects as varied as shortened attention spans, sleep problems, body image issues, depression, bullying, gambling, and addiction. Parents are left to themselves to protect their children online with somewhere between little help and outright animosity from tech companies. As CEO of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation Dawn Hawkins has rightly noted , “The parental controls do not work. … They’ve designed these platforms without parents in mind.” 

As current law stands, social media platforms, websites, and the companies that own them are not legally accountable for what happens to kids while on their sites. Despite additional pressure placed on these tech companies in recent years, there is still not any real incentive to keep children from their sites. Less kids means less money, both now and in the future.

Despite the now obvious harms, young people have little incentive to pull themselves from what are their primary social and communication hubs. As Jonathan Haidt has argued, today’s situation represents a collective action problem. Many people stand to benefit by collectively coming offline. However, if only one person or small group of people chooses that course of action, it is not beneficial but costly.

To be restricted from or to opt out of social media today comes at great social cost for individual tweens and teens. The vast majority of their peers own smartphones by age 12. The only way forward is some kind of collective action, so that the health benefits of turning off screens outweigh the social costs.

This is where KOSA and COPPA 2.0 can help. As currently written, KOSA makes tech companies liable for the harms caused to minors on their platforms based on the platform’s design. It also makes them responsible for creating tools that safeguard minors when using their platforms—tools like protecting privacy, limiting autoplay videos and personalized recommendations, and blocking the distribution of unlawful materials.

COPPA 2.0 is also a strong step toward incentivizing collective action. The original bill, passed in 1998, prohibited the collection of personal information of kids 13 and under. COPPA 2.0 raised this to any minor 17 and under. This is important because companies use this personal information for targeted advertising, which keeps kids online.

Of course, these bills will never replace good parenting and collective community actions. Parents must be present with their teens and often in between them and their screens. They also must push their schools, home-school groups, or other educational alternatives to unplug together. 

It’s likely that more laws will be needed. In the battle between families and tech leviathans, families are outmatched. However, these two bills are a strong start. Parents, grandparents, teachers, mentors, and others should contact their representatives to help make sure KOSA and COPPA 2.0 get passed in the House and signed into law.

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Jared Hayden. If you’re a fan of Breakpoint, leave a review on your favorite podcast app. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org. 

X Officially Allows Social Media Platform to Become Porn Gallery

Jun 7, 2024S.A. McCarthyDecencyDecency, Pornography

One of the world’s largest and most influential internet platforms announced that it will formally permit pornography, according to newly published guidelines.

Late last month, X (formerly Twitter) issued new standards regarding “adult content,” which the social media giant defined as “any consensually produced and distributed material depicting adult nudity or sexual behavior that is pornographic or intended to cause sexual arousal. This also applies to AI-generated, photographic or animated content such as cartoons, hentai, or anime.” The new guidelines allow users to share pornographic adult content “provided it’s properly labeled and not prominently displayed.” The guidelines add, “We balance this freedom by restricting exposure to Adult Content for children or adult users who choose not to see it. We also prohibit content promoting exploitation, nonconsent, objectification, sexualization or harm to minors, and obscene behaviors.”

The newly defined guidelines on pornography do not reflect a change in the platform’s policy, as it previously allowed users to post and share sexually explicit content before business magnate Elon Musk purchased the company in 2022.

In comments to The Washington Stand, Mary Szoch, director of Family Research Council’s Center for Human Dignity, stated, “X’s decision to allow pornography will make it infinitely more difficult for men and women who are striving to live virtuous lives. It will make it even more likely that young boys and girls are exposed to porn at an age where their brain is still developing. What a tragedy.”

She continued, “It’s no exaggeration to say that pornography destroys lives and ruins families. The brains of countless men and women who, often through no fault of their own, find themselves ensnared by this form of evil, are altered in the same way as they would be if they had used drugs. If not treated with the seriousness it deserves, it tears marriages apart. And all of this doesn’t even begin to touch on the impact the pornography industry has on the victims who create the pornography that feeds the industry.”

“Pornography is so exploitive, it’s impossible to ethically produce it or fully ‘consent’ to being part of its production,” commented Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at FRC. “Pornography is at the top of the list of billion-dollar industries on the march to capture our children. That X wants to be officially complicit in platforming this content is deeply disturbing, especially given Elon Musk’s skepticism of the gender cult, so obviously fueled by porn consumption.” Kilgannon also noted that the pornography industry facilitates and profits from human sex trafficking, adding, “We all deserve better than porn. God’s plan for human sexuality is beautiful, unlike the production, distribution, and platforming of the hideous lie that is pornography.”

X’s new guidelines request users who generate or post pornographic content to mark their content as such so that a filter may be placed over it. Users who are reported to X’s content moderators for failing to mark their pornographic content may have their accounts suspended or otherwise penalized. Those who, in X’s words, “choose not to see it” will have the option of either ignoring filtered content and continuing their scrolling or else removing the filter and viewing the content. Users who either register using a birth date denoting them as under the age of 18 or who do not use a birth date when registering will be blocked from removing the filter. There is currently no mechanism to verify ages or ensure birth dates entered are accurate.

“Pornography is perhaps the greatest example of what happens when freedom is not regulated by virtue. In the name of freedom, X has taken the position that it doesn’t regulate anything unless it is illegal,” commented Joseph Backholm, senior fellow for Biblical Worldview at FRC. “While they claim to be neutral, in reality they will become a tool for evil that will produce very real social consequences.”

He continued, “Having pornography distributed on a site often used for collating news is insidious because it will appear even if you’re not looking for it. States may soon need to pass age verification laws to get on X because X may soon become primarily a place for pornography. Presumably, X is afraid that stopping pornography would be ‘censorship,’ which is true but also appropriate. They are demonstrating the consequences of moral relativism. If you’re afraid to identify something as evil, you’ll never be capable of stopping evil.”

Nearly one third of states across the U.S. currently require age verification processes before accessing pornographic websites, in order to prevent children from viewing pornography. This has resulted in major pornography websites, such as Pornhub, shutting down entirely in several states.

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand. Originally published by The Washington Stand.

Pornography Harms Children

May 30, 2024Jerry CoxDecency, VideoChild Welfare, Obscenity, Pornography, Video

Live Action recently released a video featuring Matt Fradd explaining how he became addicted to pornography when he was just 8 years old — leading to a decade long battle to overcome his addiction. Today he is one of the leading speakers on the harms of pornography.

Stories like this underscore the importance of legislation like Arkansas passed in 2023 requiring pornographic websites to use a government-issued ID or a commercially available age verification method to protect kids from pornographic material.

You can watch the video below.