A key House of Representatives Committee held a hearing this week to move forward three of Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee’s (CWALAC) priority pieces of legislation.
The House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce (E&C) subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade (CMT) hosted a hearing Tuesday morning titled “Legislative Solutions to Protect Children and Teens Online.” The hearing comes on the heels of another committee hearing investigating the effects of unregulated AI on children and several rumors of a child protection package coming from the committee soon. Congress hasn’t passed any protections of this kind in decades, and CWALAC members have felt the consequences of their inaction in their communities. That’s why we’ve identified three key pieces of legislation that would provide meaningful safeguards for kids online and made them a legislative priority.
The first of these bills is the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which has been a CWALAC priority for several years now. KOSA passed the Senate last Congress but was never brought to a vote in the House of Representatives. The bill requires online platforms to:
- Automatically enable the strongest privacy settings for children
- Create channels to report harmful behavior
- Take meaningful steps to mitigate specific dangers to minors (including suicide, sexual exploitation, and illegal products)
- Report how the usage of their products impacts the well-being of children and adults
The next piece of priority legislation is Congresswoman Mary Miller’s (R-Illinois 15th) SCREEN Act, which requires pornographic websites to adopt age verification technology that ensures children cannot access the age-restricted content. This technology must be more robust than simply entering your birthday, but it cannot store any data beyond the user’s age.
Finally, the App Store Accountability Act was first introduced in Congress late last year and quickly gained CWALAC’s endorsement. We identified it as another necessary piece of the larger puzzle that protects children from various harms online. This bill specifically targets app stores that sell age-inappropriate applications to children. When introducing the bill, Congress John James (R-Michigan 10th) said,
Kids cannot consent — and any company that exposes them to addictive or adult material should be held accountable. The App Store Accountability Act holds Big Tech companies to the same standard as local corner stores. It safeguards the next generation by empowering parents and ensures that when it comes to protecting children, no one is above the law.
Upon learning about the upcoming E&C initiative to protect kids online, CWALAC worked to ensure its package included these critical protections. We were pleased to see the Committee call a hearing on all three of these bills.
The hearing was surprisingly partisan. Though KOSA passed the Senate 91-3 last year, House Democrats appeared to unanimously oppose the House Committee’s efforts. They noted a fear that LGBTQ content online would be “miscategorized as sexual speech.” Though, of course, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, etc. are precisely labels of sexual preference.
But while solutions were debated, the concern about child exploitation was shared widely. The room was filled with parents who had walked through the unbearable loss of a child due to online exploitation. Many of them held photos of their deceased children in the room to remind the members of Congress exactly what was at stake.
Concerned Women for America LAC members know this well. They see the devastation online exploitation has caused children and families in their communities, and some within their very own homes. Parents are doing their best, but there aren’t enough screens or parental controls in the world to keep up with all the evil traps set for children online. And with education, research, and more moving online, staying completely off the grid isn’t a viable option for everyone either.
That is why CWALAC has been working tirelessly to identify solutions in Congress that, first and foremost, bolster parents’ abilities to guide their children’s internet access. The App Store Accountability Act is a prime example of that. We are grateful to lead support on these initiatives and more as we seek to promote truly pro-family legislation in Congress.
