The teens are lobbying against the online safety act

KOSA: How kids and teens are protecting their online privacy and privacy? The ACLU National Advocacy Institute (NAI) speaks out against mental health disorders

Teens brought to Capitol Hill by the American Civil Liberties Union do not think that the internet is all sunshine and rainbows. Their concerns are not limited to one area and the content they care about varies from person to person. They were being disrespectful to the adults in the room, one theme kept emerging.

The Kids Online Safety Act (Kosa) and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0) would impose new responsibilities on platforms accessed by children. They are the first major internet protections for kids in over two decades.

Parent advocates of children who have died by suicide because of cyberbullying, have been helped by KOSA. Congress doesn’t always listen to grieving parents: parents lobbying against guns, which are the leading cause of death among children and teens, have gained little to no ground. The advocates that support KOSA have found more success.

KOSA doesn’t mention how platforms should mitigate risks of mental health disorders or other harms, but they can provide information that teens specifically look for to combat the harms it contemplates. But opponents like the ACLU believe it could incentivize tech companies to restrict a wide range of posts so as not to risk running afoul of the law. Their concerns aren’t just theoretical. Over enforcement by tech companies is a result of large-scale regulatory regimes aimed at platforms. Even if it is not required by law to censor content from being seen, it is still less risky to be on the side of censorship.

The parent advocates were some of the most persuasive proponents. The students were brought to Capitol Hill to lobby the other side. The teens visited as part of the ACLU’s National Advocacy Institute, a weeklong program for high school students interested in social justice advocacy.

The topic of gender identity and politics has not left the conversation. The new text on the bill was found to define mental health disorder according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual ofMental Disorders, which Senator Mike Lee believes is published by a politically driven organization. (The American Psychiatric Association, which publishes the DSM, is a professional group of nearly 40,000 people in psychiatric practice and research, and it does not recommend “medical affirmation” for “prepubertal children” with gender dysphoria.)

Towards a Better Future: How the Internet can Help Students to Find Their Identity and Where They Are From: Anjali Verma, a Rising Senior from Maryland

There is a gap between policy makers who make the policy and youth who are affected, but at this time it is particularly wide. The average age in the Senate has been highest in the last hundred years.

Anjali Verma, a rising senior from Pennsylvania, said lawmakers underestimate her generation’s intelligence and digital literacy. When we research information online with a little salt, we can think critically and say if this is something that I want to take to heart. Is this something I want to absorb?’”

Shradha Bista, a rising senior from Maryland, worried that being sheltered from information would leave young people unprepared when the floodgates of the internet fully opened as soon as they come of age. “We lose a lot of the skills that we could be learning at a younger age,” she said.

The parent of a rising junior from Louisiana who worked for the American Civil Liberties Union said that state laws preventing students from being themselves in school are preventing students from being themselves. And [for] some of those students, [the internet] is their only place to be themselves.”

The students were also worried about their ability to share information. “As a Brown woman, I post a lot about immigration. Bista said that she posts about content related to who she is and her identities. “And that is how I inform the people around me about the inner workings of my identity and the inner workings of systems in America that may be hurting me and who I am and what I stand for.”

These teens have access to information and the ability to share it. Bista said that, just as she shares information from her own point of view, she learns about the experiences of other communities on the internet. Identity is the ongoing project of understanding oneself and communicating it to the world around you; in the modern era, the internet has become a place to both be yourself and to discover yourself. For many LGBTQ teens, the internet becomes a lifeline to a community they may not otherwise have ready access to.

There is a group of trans queer kids in New Orleans that use the photo-sharing site Instagram to spread the word about their events. They fear KOSA could make it harder to find the group in that community.

With the politicization of trans healthcare, there’s been a fair amount of attention on KOSA’s potential impact on trans health information, and the bill has been amended in response to those concerns. The teens had other health issues as well. Violet Philhower, a rising senior from California, said she had found valuable information on social media about combating vaping addiction — something she said is common in her peer group. When she came across an Instagram post with 10 strategies to quit vaping, she shared it with several friends she wanted to encourage to quit — she worries that teens won’t be able to see content like that if social media platforms apply broad filters to their feeds on terms like “addiction” in order to avoid legal liability.

Matt said their mom was proactive in making sure they followed accounts that would make them feel safe and “happy about who I am” when they joined Instagram at age 15. “That is the parent’s job to protect their kids and decide how much freedom they want their kids to have. But it is not the government’s job to do that,” Matt said.

Philhower actually likes the idea that KOSA could mitigate addictive features like autoplay or infinite scroll feeds. But, she said, with KOSA’s approach, the harms outweigh the benefits. She hopes legislators can find ways to protect kids from online harms that don’t limit valuable information.

“This legislation doesn’t ban social media. It doesn’t mean that we can’t enjoy the good parts of the internet, it doesn’t mean that we can’t express ourselves freely, and it doesn’t mean that we can’t find objectionable content. The parts where we see connection, compassion, and community,” Sunderland said. The power to shape our online experiences can be gained from it. It moves choice to the top of that priority list. It makes it safer for our generation by changing the dynamic.

The Impact of a Student Lobby on Media Literacy: Is It Necessary to Disturb What We Have Don’t Say?

They were surprised that the Senate voted in the way it did. The students had talked to their legislators. According to the ACLU, the students met primarily with lawmakers from their home states — this included more than 15 senators and more than 60 House representatives from both sides of the aisle.

According to Matt, he is hopeful that the House will reflect on the impact of the legislation when they cast their votes.

Philhower told Thevere last week that lawmakers doubted their media literacy as well as their literacy about life. The adults she had spoken to that day were “so proud and so surprised” that she had shown up to lobby on an issue. “And while of course I’ll take the praise, I was kind of frustrated because I was like, ‘Why should this be surprising to you? Why is a youth speaking up about something that she cares about, why is that out of the ordinary?’”

For a long time, kids were supposed to sit quietly at the dinner table and not say anything. There is an image that youth are unable to do anything. But that’s only because we haven’t been allowed to do anything.”

That is bound to change according to Philhower. “I think we have the power, and older generations don’t see that. Maybe it is because they grew up in a world that they weren’t seen or heard in. We want to be heard and we want to be seen, but we need people to listen to us.

Online Privacy and Act of Cyberbullying: Revisiting the Impacts of a New Law to Protect Kids Online and Hold Tech Companies Accountable

Along with the safety bill, the Senate also passed online privacy legislation that would prohibit online companies from collecting personal information from kids under the age of 17 without their consent.

For example, companies would be prohibited from using algorithms to push content that underage users did not specifically search for. The concern of parents and advocates is that kids are targeted with certain kinds of content that promotes harmful behavior such as sexual exploitation and substance abuse.

The bill would also raise the maximum age of children covered under the law to 17; ban companies from collecting data from minors, including biometric indicators such as fingerprints, voiceprints and facial imagery; and improve parental controls.

“For the first time ever, online platforms will have legal responsibility to consider how they are impacting children,” Golin says.

While cyberbullying is not directly called out in the legislation, its impacts — anxiety, depression, suicidal and self-harming behaviors — are addressed, says Vaishnavi J., founder of Vyanams Strategies, an organization that advises companies on how to create safer tech products for children.

They are usually under-represented from marginalized communities. They aren’t getting the range of societal support they deserve,” J. says. “That tends to extend to online as well.”

Source: A historic new law would protect kids online and hold tech companies accountable

A Game-Changing Senator’s Perspective on Adversarial Cyberbullying and the Parents for Safe Online Spaces (PASAS) Campaign

All 50 states have laws against bullying, and every state — except Wisconsin and Alaska — include specific references to cyberbullying. There is no federal law criminalizing the use of social media for harm.

The bill was passed after families worked with the Senate. Her 16-year-old son, David, committed suicide after enduring months of online threats. Molak is urging every House member to vote in favor of what she says is a game-changing bill.

It’s a big deal for young people. She says it’s game-changing for families. “I hear it every time, it’s like a game of Whac-A-Mole.” As soon as parents figure out to keep their kids safe on one platform — three more pop up.”

Bride is also part of an ongoing effort on Capitol Hill to craft legislation that would hold social media sites and other tech companies accountable for keeping minors safe online.

After the death of her child, Bride joined Parents for Safe Online Spaces, a group of people who lost their children because they were exposed to online content. Some died of suicide after participating in online challenges like self- harm and taking drugs, while others died after engaging in sextortion.

Carson received over 100 sexually explicit and harassing texts from his high school classmates, through an anonymous messaging app. He had a phone that he used to conduct searches on to find out who was doing this to him.

Kristin Bride lost her 16-year-old son, Carson, to suicide in 2020. She says shortly before he took his own life he was bullied on the social media site Snapchat.