COLUMBIA, S.C. (WCSC) – The government has put guardrails in place on movies, TV, alcohol, and tobacco companies, requiring them to act in a way that prevents harm to kids and teens.
Now dozens of states are calling on Congress to do the same for online platforms, like social media.
“There hasn’t been a law passed to address online activities in probably a quarter of a century now,” South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said in an interview Thursday.
In that time have come the advent of social media, the invention and proliferation of smart phones, and kids and teens gaining much greater access to the online world.
But the law hasn’t kept up.
“For me, it’s dangerous because it’s hard for parents to monitor what their children are doing on their phones,” Wilson said. “As a parent of teenagers myself, this is something I struggle with.”
Wilson, a Republican, is part of a bipartisan group of more than 30 state attorneys general who sent a letter to Congressional leaders this week, calling on them to pass the federal “Kids Online Safety Act.”
The bill would require mandatory default safety settings on social media sites and allow users to disable endless-scrolling features.
“It might take a kid to an innocent site that then takes them to a not-so-innocent site, that takes them to a very dangerous site. So there’s a lot of features on these apps that are designed to be addictive,” he said.
Wilson said it’s important to hold these entities accountable if they are pushing products they know are harmful or addictive, especially to kids and teens.
So this bill would also create a duty of care for online platforms, meaning they would have a responsibility to act in a way that avoids causing harm.
“Some of these social media companies, they’re monetizing addiction, they’re monetizing self-destructive behavior, and we want them to stop,” Wilson said.
Some groups have raised concerns this could infringe on First Amendment rights.
South Carolina’s attorney general sees it differently.
“The First Amendment isn’t a blank check to do whatever you want to do, no matter what the consequences are, no matter who you’re hurting,” he said.
The bill has already passed in the US Senate but still needs to get through the House of Representatives.
If it does not pass there by the end of the year, work on Capitol Hill will have to restart next year, when a new Congress begins.
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