Unmonitored Minors on Dangerous Devices

Device manufacturers and app developers pretend that existing age-ratings of apps are effective; they turn a blind eye to the inappropriate ads that have pestered children for over a decade; they tell us that devices, in themselves, are child-safe. The engaged parent recognizes the deceitfulness of these assurances.

On November 16, the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) and the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) released a policy brief on device-level regulation to address these three predicates, among others. The brief couldn’t be timelier. Concerns regarding children’s online experiences drove 42 states to sue Meta over its addictive and harmful designs in October 2023. These lawsuits pose powerful challenges to unnecessarily dangerous and addictive features of Meta apps, and consistent litigation will continue to be essential for this issue. Yet these efforts, however critical, leave a primary issue unaddressed, that the dealers of these substances—device and app store manufacturers—have thus far avoided legislative and legal attention. The IFS/EPPC brief recommends several ways to close that loop.

Until now, devices and app stores, dominated by Apple and Google, have remained unregulated for children. The burden of responsibility for user safety rests disproportionately on the shoulders of parents, and only recently have companies like Meta begun to feel pressure. Legislators and policymakers have not given attention to the role of device manufacturers, focusing their child safety efforts largely on the regulation of dangerous (pornographic, violent) and highly trafficked (social media) sites, as in the case of several federal bipartisan bills that legislators hope to bring to the floor before the end of the year, including the Kids Online Safety Act and COPPA 2.0.

Until now, we have hoped that smartphones and tablets might be neutral tools applied for good or ill. Considering the utter lack of regulation for device and app store makers, they would have to be neutral at the convenience of their manufacturers. The legal environment for devices and the app stores accessed on them is unjustly permissive for Big Tech, thanks to Reno v. ACLU (a 1997 ruling against child protections on the grounds that harmful material does not surface “unbidden” online), Ashcroft v. ACLU (a 2002 ruling against age verification for adult sites), and the overexpansion of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which excuses social media platforms from liability for the posting of pornographic and illegal material. 

Continue reading at The American Conservative . . . .