Putting Family First in Technology: An Interview with Michael Toscano

The Institute for Family Studies has been described by The New York Times and Bloomberg as a leader in formulating pushback to some of the excesses of Big Tech—providing research and policy to legislators, policy makers, and the media around what is happening in Silicon Valley, what it means for citizens, and how it is impacting the family. Much of this work has been led by our own Michael Toscano. We interview him here to find out what’s been going on.

Chris Bullivant: What is happening in Big Tech, with the advance of smartphones, social media, and easy access to more explicit pornography? And what has that done to families? 

Michael Toscano: We are only just beginning to grapple with the extent to which the technologies of Big Tech have transformed our lives. Over the last decade, the pro-family movement has come to terms with the fact that market imperatives have driven American tech companies to develop predatory business models that prioritize the addiction of children to their products. That’s usually what we mean by Big Tech. Recently, however, it’s become clearer that the federal government has had a (pardon the pun) big hand in building up Big Tech. As economist Mariana Mazzucato has pointed out, every piece of underlying technology used to manufacture the smartphone is a product of defense and intelligence contracting, going back many decades. That’s the next frontier in our understanding and action: developing a more comprehensive account of the actual relationship between Big Tech and the State—and then developing serious politics to yield pro-family outcomes in light of that. 

One way in which public policy, so far, has failed to protect American kids and families from the technology industry is the combined effect of the Supreme Court and Congress deregulating industries that were established with federal research dollars. The foundations of the internet were laid by funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and then, decades later when it became commercially viable, the infrastructure was opened to the private sector. To protect this federally-established technology industry, Congress passed Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shielded platforms that facilitated third-party sharing from liability for what a private user posted. Federal courts subsequently read Section 230 in a radical way, immunizing these online companies from practically any liability whatsoever. That’s why social media platforms have morphed into what are effectively conspiracies against childhood, rife with cyberbullying, pornography, child sexual abuse material, and worse.

The Courts basically did the same thing for porn sites, by ruling in 1998, in Reno v. ACLU, that despite the State’s compelling interest in keeping children from accessing pornography, age verification was too restrictive on adult speech, and was, therefore, unconstitutional. 

The effect of all of this is that our technologies put the well-being of families last. As we recently put it in “A Future for the Family,” a joint statement at First Things signed by several dozen eminent conservatives, "Our present technologies are not, however, designed to serve the family. They were developed to accomplish military, bureaucratic, and corporate purposes, without regard to effects on families."

And these are the sad results:

American technology has undermined the moral authority of parents, the procreative potential of spouses, and the ability of families to shape their communities; it has commodified the data, relationships, and bodies of children; and it has enabled the out-sourcing of jobs that once supported a healthy marriage culture among the poor and working class. This crisis affects almost every aspect of our national life.

With some recent legislative victories, as well as a landmark victory in Court, we are seeing the beginning of a policy, legislative, and coalitional agenda to re-orient technology toward family flourishing.

Social media platforms have morphed into what are effectively conspiracies against childhood, rife with cyberbullying, pornography, child sexual abuse material, and worse.

The recent SCOTUS ruling in support of age verification upheld Paxton. What was our involvement?

For several years, IFS has been a leading member of a larger coalition that has been educating lawmakers, developing legislative models, arguing in the public square, and submitting amici to the United States Supreme Court, with the goal of requiring that pornography sites conduct age verification. At the same time, we have been leaders in developing legislative models that help make app stores, smart devices, and social media safer for kids and subject to genuine parental authority. The results have been nothing short of astounding, with several dozen laws passed around the country, to which we have contributed blood, sweat, and tears.

I cannot tell you how many analysts marked us as surefire losers in Court. But the results are in: We won.

IFS’s Brad Wilcox submitted an amicus brief in support of a law in Texas that required age verification of porn sites, alongside eminent scholars like Jason Carroll, Brian Willoughby, Jean Twenge, and Jonathan Haidt. And despite the confidence of judicial prognosticators that we were heading for a beating, the Court upheld the Texas law, 6-3. As Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the majority opinion:

Age-verification laws like H. B. 1181 fall within States’ authority to shield children from sexually explicit content. The First Amendment leaves undisturbed States’ traditional power to prevent minors from accessing speech that is obscene from their perspective. That power necessarily includes the power to require proof of age before an individual can access such speech. It follows that no person—adult or child—has a First Amendment right to access speech that is obscene to minors without first submitting proof of age.

This is a total vindication of our work on this issue over the last several years. I’d like to give a shout out to our friends: Clare Morell, Adam Candeub, Brad Littlejohn, Melissa McKay, Joel Thayer, Joseph Kohm, Chris McKenna, Dawn Hawkins, Iain Corby, and so many others who worked on this issue. Also, our friends at the Heritage Foundation, but I’ll say more about them later.

Here at IFS, we are looking ahead to the federal level, where we want to see an age verification law passed that addresses this problem nationwide and ratchets up the enforcement mechanisms. For example, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) is leading the way with the excellent SCREEN Act. 

The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” included a moratorium on state regulation of AI for the next decade. What would have been the problem with that, and what role did IFS play in getting that removed?

The provision changed quite a bit over time, as it moved from the House to the Senate, and navigated the rulings of the Senate Parliamentarian, but the essence of it was that Congress was moving to block any and all state regulation of artificial intelligence for 10 years. In our view, we were about to repeat the Section 230 fiasco and were going to shield these new powerful technology companies from liability for harms they might commit against children, families, workers and citizens. It appeared that Congress had learned nothing from its previous mistakes. At the 11th hour, however, the Senate rejected the moratorium overwhelmingly, with a vote of 99-1.

But to get there, we needed senators to take a heroic stand to convince their colleagues to vote against this provision. Fortunately, there were several, and eventually many, but here I want to specifically mention Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Josh Hawley (R-MO), who very publicly opposed this provision. I tip my cap to these two and their staff, who, trust me, got attacked from all sides, and experienced incredible pressure to switch their votes. But they stayed true. They were the foundation upon which the 99 votes were built. We owe them a great deal, as well as the Senate as whole, which spoke with one voice against this provision that would have unbound Big Tech and given it unparalleled power over families for at least a decade.  

We are a small part of what is emerging as a mass movement that includes parents, religious leaders, state lawmakers, attorneys general, and lawmakers and leaders in Washington, D.C., who believe it is our duty to make technology good for families.

IFS did what we usually do: public education. We explained to lawmakers our concerns and opposed the moratorium as signatories of several letters, editorials in multiple places, and most importantly, original research. In a poll with YouGov, we found heavy opposition to the moratorium, hugely bi-partisan, uniting all income groups and ages. Nobody liked this thing, except for a few wonks in DC and heavyweights in Silicon Valley. In short, American voters opposed the moratorium by 3 to 1. That’s a really big margin, but it was dwarfed by the opposition of young voters, ages 18 to 34, who opposed the moratorium by an incredible 7 to 1! It’s hard to find a more unpopular policy.

Again, this all comes down to courage. On July 1, 2025, Senator Marsha Blackburn approached the Senate floor with an amendment to remove the moratorium from the One Big Beautiful Bill. I get chills when I recall her unscripted speech announcing the amendment: 

What we know is this. This body has proven that they cannot legislate on emerging technology.... There are all these pieces of legislation dealing with A.I. that we haven’t passed. But you know who has passed it? It is our states.

Shortly thereafter, the thing was history.

Here, I have to mention the work of my friends at the Heritage Foundation: Wes Hodges, Daniel Cochrane, and Annie Chestnut Tutor, whose leadership and whose bill analyses at the Daily Signal were critical to our success. Also, Tim Estes, head of AI company AngelQ, who is a warrior for child safety online. There are other friends, too, who did incredible work, but I am not sure they want to be named. 

How did you get drawn into this area of policy and research? What motivates you each day to do it?

The short answer is, I really care about it. Making technology good for Americans and families has been on my heart for decades now. But institutionally, it came to life in 2019, when IFS founder Brad Wilcox and I had an event with several dozen moms in Richmond, Virginia, who told us—in no uncertain terms—that the biggest threat to their families was the electronic addiction of their children. Since then, it has been a major focus of IFS. 

It’s an honor and a blessing to work on this every day. For years, I thought I was a loner. But then I found many collaborators along the way, with the same passion to make technology work for families and not against them. Let me thank the board of IFS for putting its trust in me and allowing me to do this work, supporting my move from executive director to director of IFS’s Family First Technology Initiative. Also, my colleagues, especially IFS founder Brad Wilcox and Jared Hayden, IFS tech policy analyst. 

We are a small part of what is emerging as a mass movement that includes parents, religious leaders, state lawmakers, attorneys general, and lawmakers and leaders in Washington, D.C., who believe it is their duty to make technology good for families.

You spoke about the importance of collaboration with other groups. How have you managed to exert our influence over such a wide group from across the political spectrum?

Look, working against Big Tech is not easy. Silicon Valley has all the power. We have none. Victory cannot be accomplished without friends. IFS has been blessed to do some amazing things, but the biggest challenges are ahead. We are going to need our friends now more than ever.

*Photo credit: Shutterstock