A range of approaches to child online safety legislation (COSL) is being proposed, debated, or implemented at both the federal and state level in the United States. While the specifics of these bills differ, they coalesce around concerns regarding the effects of social media on young people. This document:
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Explains these concerns, why they have surfaced now, and how COSL purports to solve them.
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Outlines major international, US federal and state legislative efforts, particularly the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA).
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Summarizes the primary frames by which COSL is justified—mental health, sexual exploitation and abuse, eating disorders and self-harm, and social media addiction—and evaluates the evidence for each.
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Outlines concerns that researchers, activists, and technologists have with these bills: age verification, privacy and surveillance, First Amendment rights, and expansion of parental control over young people’s rights and autonomy.
While the impetus for this legislation is well-meaning, we question the assumptions behind it. Mental health and well-being is complicated, and tied to many different social and contextual factors. Solutions that exclusively focus on technology address only a very small part of this picture. The granular debate over the evidence linking smartphones and social media to youth well-being distracts us from the real difficulties faced by young people.
COSL poses enormous potential risks to privacy and free expression, and will limit youth access to social connections and important community resources while doing little to improve the mental health of vulnerable teenagers. Ultimately, legislation like KOSA is an attempt to regulate the technology industry when other efforts have failed, using moral panic and for-the-children rhetoric to rapidly pass poorly-formulated legislation.
We strongly believe that reform of social platforms and regulation of technology is needed. We need comprehensive privacy legislation, limits on data collection, interoperability, more granular individual and parental guidance tools, and advertising regulation, among other changes. Offline, young people need spaces to socialize without adults, better mental health care, and funding for parks, libraries, and extracurriculars. But rather than focusing on such solutions, KOSA and similar state bills empower parents rather than young people, do little to curb the worst abuses of technology corporations, and enable an expansion of the rhetoric that is currently used to ban books, eliminate diversity efforts in education, and limit gender affirming and reproductive care. They will eliminate important sources of information for vulnerable teenagers and wipe out anonymity on the social web. While we recognize the regulatory impulse, the forms of child safety legislation currently circulating will not solve the problems they claim to remedy.
(Research Summary by Felicity Gancedo)
Jacob Smith, CITAP GRA, along with co-authors Aaron Shapiro, Courtlyn Pippert, and Zari Taylor, explore the intricate dynamics of power and reciprocity between digital platforms and their users through the lens of "asymmetrical reciprocity," in “Patrons of commerce: Asymmetrical reciprocity and moral economics of platform power”. The authors posit that platforms often position themselves as benevolent patrons, creating a perceived imbalance where they appear to give more than they take. This perception helps platforms legitimize their authority and control, but it is a fragile legitimacy that users frequently challenge. The authors argue that platforms utilize this patronage to mask the true nature of their interactions with users, where they often extract more value than they contribute.
Case Study #1: Twitch
Changes in subscription revenue policies sparked significant backlash on Twitch; the platform's decision to alter the split of subscription revenues from a favorable 70/30% to a less generous 50/50% for top earners was met with outcry from content creators. These creators felt that Twitch, by rolling back previously negotiated terms, had violated a tacit agreement of mutual benefit and support. This vignette illustrates the precarious balance platforms must maintain between their profitability and their public image as supportive of their user communities.
Case Study #2: Amazon Kindle
Authors utilizing Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing faced challenges with scammers manipulating the platform's payment algorithms. The platform's initial reluctance to address the scamming issues effectively showed a discrepancy between the support Amazon claimed to offer to authors and the reality of their policies. This situation highlighted the tension between Amazon's role as a market leader in digital publishing and its responsibilities toward the creators who populate its platform with content.
Case Study #3: Deplatforming adult content creators and sex workers
Sex workers and adult content creators, who often face harsher content moderation compared to other users, are directly impacted by shadowbans and account suspensions on platforms. This segment of platform users regularly contends with arbitrary enforcement of policies, which disproportionately affects their ability to earn a livelihood. The response from the platforms often lacks transparency and fails to address the specific needs and challenges faced by these creators, revealing a significant imbalance in how platforms manage relationships with different user groups.
The authors argue that to rectify the asymmetries in power and reciprocity, platforms need to invest in what the authors term "legitimacy costs." Platforms can better align their operations with the interests of their diverse user communities, thereby stabilizing their legitimacy and fostering a more equitable digital ecosystem.
(Summary by Katherine Furl)
How does the recent proliferation of digital media shape our approach to political communication? How should we consider this shifting approach to political communication in increasingly digital media ecosystems alongside broader, longstanding power structures influencing communication and politics? In their new textbook Platforms, Power, and Politics: An Introduction to Political Communication in the Digital Age, Ulrike Klinger, Daniel Kreiss, and Bruce Mutsvairo trace the transformation of political communication in the aftermath of digital technology’s explosive development and widespread adoption, in a text accessible to a wide-ranging audience.
Klinger, Kreiss, and Mutsvairo take a broad approach to the term “technology,” considering the term inclusive of all “knowledge, skills, processes, methods, and tools.” In this broad sense, technology has shaped both communication and political systems for the bulk of human history, leaving its mark through everything from the first bound volumes (the codex) to the printing press. More recently, the increasing ubiquity of the internet and related digital technologies have revolutionized societal approaches to political communications, though not always in the ways we might expect. As one example, the supposed existence of closed-off, like-minded social media “filter bubbles” or “echo chambers” has not held up to empirical scrutiny, yet filter bubbles and echo chambers have received undue academic and media attention.
Both political and media systems are capable of generating social progress and backsliding, often simultaneously. Just as digital technologies can bring attention to organizing efforts in pursuit of liberal democratic ideals, so too can digital platforms fan the flames of illiberalism, authoritarianism, and racism. Though digital media platforms can theoretically serve as democratizing forces in political systems, the democratizing power of social media is not always achieved in practice. In Klinger, Kreiss, and Mutsvairo’s words, “Democracy – like any political system – must be continually performed, legitimated, and protected by many institutions and political actors.” Democracy must be repeatedly achieved, and the work to sustain democracy continues even in an increasingly digital society.
In 13 chapters designed to be read together or alone, and interspersed with compelling cases illustrating important concepts, Klinger, Kreiss, and Mutsvairo’s text provides important insight into how we can understand the digitization of political communication while remaining cognizant that it remains embedded in broader systems of power. In doing so, the authors provide a valuable resource for students, researchers, journalists, and other stakeholders—as well as anyone interested in understanding the connections between politics, communication, and an ever-more digital world.