Protecting Kids Online Safety and Privacy
WHILE GIVING FAMILIES THE TOOLS THEY NEED TO NAVIGATE TODAY’S DIGITAL WORLD WITH CONFIDENCE
Historical Challenges & Silver Bullet Solutions
- How to protect kids online has historically been one of the hardest and most important set of policy issues facing policymakers, innovators and parents. Parents and their kids deserve comprehensive solutions that are not only effective, but that protect their safety, privacy, and constitutional rights.
- We’ve been grappling with these issues for more than 30 years. And while technology has changed dramatically over that time, the basic challenges have not.
- Policymakers still are looking for simple silver bullet solutions to what is a complex, multi-faceted set of issues. And the simple solutions are often:
- Ineffective and unworkable,
- can create substantial new privacy risks for all users – but especially kids,
- raise important constitutional and legal concerns,
- sometimes without effectively addressing the fundamental issues of how we create safer spaces for children online.
Age Verification: A Current Focus
About half of states have adopted laws mandating age verification in some form for accessing adult
content or social media platforms. Some states are also proposing laws requiring parental consent when downloading apps. However, in many of these cases, courts have blocked the laws seeking to impose age-verification gates on apps, social media or the Internet.
Opportunities For Progress
Key opportunities exist for making major progress. Progress involves action from policymakers, innovators, and parents alike, and it can create a more positive digital environment for our kids.
In this brief, we explore:
- How parents view these critical issues,
- The effectiveness of different age verification technological approaches,
- And look at some of the other tools in the policy toolbox that can produce progress.