After the success of Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn’s bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act, she exclusively released to The Tennessee Star a guide for parents to keep their children safe online as they head back to school.
“When children are online, they are the product, and Big Tech is trying every method possible to keep them scrolling, clicking ads, and sharing every detail of their lives,” the guide says. “Social media platforms put children at risk of being exposed to eating disorders, suicidal ideation, sexual exploitation, and advertisements for illegal substances. Now is the perfect time to study up on how you can keep your kids safe online.”
The tips for online safety include:
- Secure Privacy Settings
- Beware of Stranger-Danger, Especially Online
- Keep Personal Information Private
- Explain the Dangers of Social Media
- Have Conversations About Your Child’s Well-Being
Below is the full guide:
The Kids Online Safety Act passed the U.S. Senate in July.
In a press conference after its passage, Blackburn celebrated the new legislation, which she co-sponsored with Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT).
“The Kids Online Safety Act is broadly bipartisan. It is a piece of legislation Senator Blumenthal and I have worked on for three and a half years and what this would do is put the responsibility on social media to do safety by design,” she said. “It’s basically a product design bill, and they would have to have a duty of care, open these algorithms, submit to annual audits, do a toolbox for kids and parents so they can more closely tweak their settings and have a portal where parents and kids can report bad actors – pedophiles, drug dealers, sex traffickers, people pushing suicidal ideation, people that are pushing eating disorders – and get this off the virtual space.”
The bill accomplishes the following goals:
- Creates a duty for online platforms to prevent and mitigate specific dangers to minors, including promotion of suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse, sexual exploitation, advertisements for certain illegal products (e.g. tobacco and alcohol), and other matters.
- Requires large social media platforms to perform an annual independent audit that assesses the risks to minors, their compliance with this act, and whether the platform is taking meaningful steps to prevent those harms.
This year, the Tennessee General Assembly also passed a law to protect the state’s children online.
On May 5, Gov. Bill Lee (R) signed into law H.B. 1891, sponsored by State Representative William Lamberth (R-Portland)
That bill requires parents to give their minor children consent to use social media platforms. It requires social media companies to allow parents to monitor their children’s social media activities and set time limits for social media use.
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter.
