Parental Information Loss on Facebook: A Case Study in the U.S. Supreme Court: Free Speech on Social Media, Cyberbullying and Non-consensual Photo Sharing

Patrick T. Brown is a fellow at The Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative group based in Washington, DC. He is also a former senior policy adviser to Congress’ Joint Economic Committee. You can follow him on the social networking site. The views expressed in this piece are his own. CNN has more opinion on it.

The case before the Supreme Court raised questions about free speech on the internet and the use of a computer to do it. The lawyers for the parents of a teenager killed in an Islamic State attack are arguing that the video-sharing website should be held responsible for promoting their group’s content.

For example, nearly 9 in 10 Republican parents, and 77% of all parents, agreed with a proposal to require social media platforms to grant parents full access to what their children are seeing and who they are communicating with online, the most popular policy polled among that subgroup. 81% were in favor of a law that would require social media platforms to get parents’ permission before allowing minors to open an account. The majority of parents agree that internet service providers should have to verify a person’s age before allowing them to view pornography.

This issue is something that nearly every parent has to navigate. According to a recent report from Common Sense Media, the age at which children are exposed to pornography is twelve, and three quarters have seen porn online by seventeen.

But parents have plenty to worry about kids online in addition to early exposure to pornography. All manner of online content can impact a child’s life. As this week’s Supreme Court case reminds us, youth can be lured into extremism or self-harm via online content. Parents might want to know if their child is becoming increasingly drawn toward figures who share racist or misogynistic views online.

The documents indicated that internal data at the parent company of Facebook showed the site led to more severe and self-destructive thoughts, as well as making body image issues worse for 1 in 3 teen girls. The company decided to delay an “Instagram for Kids” offering. Cyberbullying and non-consensual nude photo sharing have plagued high schools.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/25/opinions/kids-online-safety-act-congress-brown/index.html

The Policies over Parents Act: Reply to a Democrat and a Republican Lobby Call for Better Online Safety for Under 17 Year Olds

A bipartisan effort to take modest steps to protect kids online might bear fruit. The Kids Online Safety Act is being pushed by Republican and Democrat senators, and would update the framework for how tech companies serve children online.

Future action will probably take these concerns into account. A bill was introduced last week that would bar under 17 year olds from opening a social media account. The direction of the legislation is laudable as it acknowledges that American parents are looking for bold action when it comes to keeping kids safe online.

Democrats are fiercely opposed to the bill, dubbing it the “politics over parents act.” They claim it seeks to codify already existing parental rights and politicizes the classroom.

There are tools that can be used to keep kids safe online, but many of them are easy to circumvent. Asking an individual parent to be a expert on various settings and filters for keeping inappropriate content out of the house puts a heavy burden on families. Establishing age-based controls, and policing them effectively, would be an appropriate step for Congress to take.

Some think that the framework doesn’t go far enough. The policy solutions polled in our recent report are more aggressive than those included in KOSA, and still receive support from three in four parents.

House Republicans passed legislation Friday aimed at boosting parents’ access to information about their child’s education, fulfilling a midterm pledge that GOP lawmakers hope will be a galvanizing issue for their base next year.

“The Parents Bill of Rights is an important step towards protecting children and dramatically strengthening the rights of parents,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said on the House floor ahead of the bill’s passage.

What Can a House Go? How Parents Think about Education and the “Don’t Say Gay” Re-opens the Problem of “Educated Parents”

Five Republicans joined Democrats in voting against the legislation. Republicans hold a narrow majority in the chamber, but several Democratic absences enabled the legislation to pass despite the handful of GOP defections.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has already said the bill has no political future in the Democratic-controlled Senate, but the legislation does send a message about GOP priorities and indicates a further leaning in on culture war issues ahead of the 2024 election.

The bill would also prohibit schools from selling student information. Elementary schools or schools housing grades 5-8 would be required to obtain parental consent before changing a student’s pronouns or preferred name or allowing a student to change their sex-based accommodations, like locker rooms or bathrooms.

The extremeMAGA Republicans want to jam their Rightwing ideology down the throats of students, teachers and parents because they don’t want to invest in empowering parents.

Despite Republican lawmakers repeatedly claiming the legislation doesn’t ban books, Democrats argue the bill could provide a legal basis for book bans and censorship in schools.

The state level has seen political fissures about parents rights and what classrooms are taught. The “Don’t Say Gay” bill, signed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, is considered one of the more controversial pieces of legislation he has signed. The policy currently being implemented by the administration is to prohibit any instruction on gender identity or sexual orientation at all grade levels.

Jeffrey Henig, a professor of political science and education at the Teachers College, said Democrats are now trying to take advantage of the “idiotic” things they see in some parts of the country.

“That’s because there still are a lot of Americans, including Americans in purple states or swing areas, who value the notion that education ought to stretch their kids’ minds and understandings, the notion that we have a complicated history in the U.S. and that children as eventual citizens need to understand that complicated history.”

The issue of involvement in education by the parents has been a topic of culture war for years, and was accelerated by the corona virus, which made many parents angry.

Republicans argued that the theory was being taught to students in K-12 schools, and brought it to the forefront of political discourse.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/24/1165592471/what-a-house-gop-messaging-bill-could-spell-for-2024-culture-war-campaign

Parent’s Rights in the Classroom: The Role of Democrats in the 2016 Democratic National Committee Causal Dialogue and the Koch Political Report

The Parents Bill of Rights is an outgrowth ofGlenn Youngkin’s victory, said Dave Wasserman of The Cook Political Report.

“If Republicans were to attack Democrats as a party beholden to teachers unions and siding against parents on a number of cultural war topics, such as gender identity and sexual orientation, then it would be well received by both sides,” he said. We have not seen this issue take a major center stage in the presidential campaign so it’s going to take time to see if independent voters catch on to the Republicans’ message.

While that could be effective at the district level, the strategy becomes trickier on the presidential level. The nature of the Republican primary means candidates are likely to cast themselves further right than some moderate Republicans.

Most of the strategy in a general election depends on perception of audience in a small number of purple states. That’s where the Republicans want to be able to swing back to the more controversial version of parents rights.