U.S. Senator Katie Britt, R-Ala., participated in a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism hearing entitled “Ending the Scourge: The Need for the STOP CSAM Act.” The Strengthening Transparency and Obligations to Protect Children Suffering from Abuse and Mistreatment Act would help to “crack down on the proliferation of child sexual abuse material online by, among other provisions, allowing victims to more easily sue companies that host this material,” Britt’s release stated.
Senator Britt heard from multiple witnesses, including John Pizzuro, CEO of Raven, an advocacy organization focused on ending child exploitation in the United States.
In her line of questioning, she recounted Pizzuro’s witness testimony during a previous Judiciary Committee hearing where he stated an alarming statistic about the number of children who are likely to be victimized during their lifetimes. “In addition to reforming Section 230 and passing bills such as STOP CSAM Act, I am of the view that one of the things that Congress needs to do is ensure that social media platforms verify the ages of their users, rather than relying on them to do that themselves . . . typically what [social media platforms] say, you can’t be on there until you’re 13, but they never verify that, so that’s just meaningless,” said Senator Britt.
Recent data from the U.S. Surgeon General’s report indicates that nearly 40 percent of children between the ages of 8 and 12 use social media. The rise in child sexual exploitation and abuse has no doubt proliferated due to the rise of social media, with the FBI estimating that as many as 500,000 sexual predators utilize social media to prey on children.
Senator Britt highlighted social media legislation she led in the 118th Congress, the Protecting Kids on Social Media Act, which would require social media companies to undertake rigorous age verification measures based on the latest technology. In the hearing, she addressed the need to enforce age verification on social media apps, asking Pizzuro, “Do you have any views regarding how Congress may best approach the age verification issue?”
“Yes, device-based. Your phone knows how old you are, right? So if I’m ten years old and I try to download Snap[chat] and I try to get on it, [the phone] knows that I’m not [of age],” Pizzuro responded.
“So the information exists,” confirmed Senator Britt. “So then enforcing this, making these companies actually be able to not download an app, let’s say if you know that the child that owns the phone is under the age of that of which [an app] should be available, shouldn’t actually be that hard . . .” She continued, saying, “So what you’re telling me is we have all of the information we already need to help protect our children, correct to age verification. We just have companies that are unwilling to do the hard thing that would be the best thing for our kids.”
Pizzuro affirmed Senator Britt’s statement that tech companies already have much of the necessary data needed to undertake age verification. “ . . . and not only that,” Pizzuro continued, “something along that thing as a solution would actually help parents because parents don’t understand every new app that comes in. So you give parents the ability to protect their children at home. I mean, to me, what’s better than that?”
“As a parent of a 14 and a 15-year-old, I say Amen . . . What we know now versus what we knew when all of this began and then the rise in social media and the nexus to the lives of our children, we have a duty and an obligation to do something about that. And what I hear you saying to me today is these companies already have this information, so it is a choice that they are making with regards to allowing these things to be downloaded on these phones . . . I think that’s a choice that we should take away from them,” the Senator emphasized.
A video of Senator Britt’s full line of questioning can be viewed here.
Recently, Senator Britt introduced the Kids Off Social Media Act to set a minimum age of 13 to use social media platforms and prevent social media companies from feeding algorithmically-targeted content to users under the age of 17. Last month, the legislation passed out of the Senate Commerce Committee, and now heads to the full Senate for consideration.
