KOSA: How to Not Control Kids on The Internet
Limiting what people can do on the Internet is a common practice for censorship, but is the U.S. ready to make it national? Photo via FlyD on Unsplash
The Kids Online Safety Act is a bipartisan proposed piece of legislation from 2022 that calls for protecting minors online by forcing websites to implement tools to restrict their access to content that could be deemed unsafe. This piece of legislation has new attention following the social media hearings by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in January. However, it is left intentionally vague, leaving many organizations to oppose the bill for its efforts to limit the access to information young people have online. Young people are integral to forming these movements and making changes in our society. KOSA is fighting to silence that.
KOSA would limit the ability of minors to communicate with others on the Internet, despite many of them using communication as a tool for support. Many adolescents have reported feeling accepted and getting through difficulties in their lives through the Internet, in addition to its ability to serve as a creative and emotional outlet, according to the National Library of Medicine.
Two decades before the KOSA bill, the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) was passed in 2000 and promoted censorship of certain content online, similar to that of KOSA. It requires libraries and schools to implement filters on web searches to protect children from seeing obscene content. However, not only had it blocked constitutionally protected content, but it also failed to block obscene content. There is no magical filter that will stop minors from seeing obscene content online, and arbitrarily blocking content only proves to limit all Internet resources, not just the ones that the government thinks are unacceptable.
Even while technology is advancing to detect obscene content, obscene is still a highly subjective term. Parents are vocal about how simply the depiction of LGBTQIA people in books can be considered obscene and worth censoring, something that modern values don’t reflect, as a study from the Pew Research Center found in June 2020.
Some are optimistic about KOSA, citing that it could stop the promotion of content that proliferates suicide, eating disorders or substance abuse. The bill has gone through several revisions, many of which attempt to address the targeting the censorship of LGBTQIA resources; however, critics still label KOSA as a bill that silences and censors content online through the inappropriately used excuse of child protection. The Trevor Project, among other LGBTQIA groups, no longer opposes the bill due to recent amendments addressing its concerns.
The issue of KOSA ties all the way back to the fundamental idea of freedom of speech in the U.S. Even when topics get controversial, social media is there to keep important conversations going, even when traditional media steps to the side. Movements like Black Lives Matter were accelerated by Gen Z using social media platforms, and social media is where government leaders responded to that same outcry.
KOSA is yet another “think of the children” style law that attempts to block content under the guise that it will protect American youth. In reality, legislators are using KOSA as a vehicle to push agendas and censor content in America that they see as unacceptable, regardless of whether or not society agrees. Until KOSA or any other legislation can take the changes of our modern generation into account, it’s clear that its implementation would be misguided.