Testifying Before Congress

On harms to kids online and what parents need Congress to do

This past Wednesday, March 26, I had the opportunity to testify before the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade, in a hearing titled The World Wild Web: Examining Harms Online.

You can watch two clips of my answers to members of the Subcommittee by clicking the images below:

And below is the text of the opening statement I delivered to the subcommittee:

Good morning, Chairman Guthrie, Chairman Bilirakis, Ranking Member Pallone, Ranking Member Schakowsky, and members of the subcommittee.

My name is Clare Morell and I am a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), where I direct our Technology and Human Flourishing Project. Over the last several years I have put out reports and model legislation for protecting kids online, now implemented in many states. I am also the mom of three and author of the forthcoming book, The Tech Exit: A Practical Guide to Freeing Kids and Teens from Smartphones, which will be published this June.

I’m here today because parents critically need better laws to back them up. If you take one thing away from my testimony today let it be this: America’s families need immediate action from Congress.

Tech companies want us to believe no more legislation is necessary. They have worked to convince us that if parents just enable time limits and parental controls, children will be safe. But “leaving it up to parents” is failing America’s children.

Time limits do nothing to address the underlying addictive design of these technologies. Their products hijack human brain vulnerabilities, especially of developing brains. A brain exposed frequently to social media resembles a brain hooked on the most highly addictive drugs.

Even if a child is only on social media for 15 minutes a day, the constant craving it creates means kids are mentally consumed by what’s happening on the app even when they aren’t using it. Kids take the virtual world with them long after they leave it.

Social media’s parental controls are also supposed to protect teens from bad actors and content but they really only allow parents to set time limits and manage certain settings. They give parents no oversight of a child’s feed or messages. Plus, the teen has to accept the parent’s supervision and can cancel it at any time. In what sense then is that a control?

Most of the popular apps like Snapchat, TikTok, and Discord, also block access to third-party controls or filters that a parent may purchase. Which means when a child can get to PornHub inside Snapchat in just five clicks, without ever leaving the app, a parent would never know.

The ineffectiveness of filters and controls has ushered in a tidal wave of online pornography exposure among children. The average age of first exposure is now twelve. And kids aren’t just seeing it. ER nurses increasingly see children sexually assaulting each other.

America’s children are suffering. Parents are exasperated. They can’t do it alone. Recently a mom found me after an event and with tears in her eyes said, “we did everything right, we had all the controls on, we had no idea our daughter got a burner phone and got sucked into pornography and dark, erotic places on social media.” Leaving it to parents will never work when there is ZERO parental involvement required whatsoever in the creation of a social media account. Or in setting up a device, or downloading apps.

Lastly, parents on their own can’t protect kids from the collective harms caused by digital technologies. The teen mental health crisis today is due not only to negative individual effects of digital technologies but also to the group social dynamics they have created. Even if a few teens use social media in a school or organization, it affects the entire cohort of young people, including those who don’t use it at all. Time limits and parental controls can’t change these group effects, nor can they protect children from seeing porn or beheading videos on another child’s unprotected device. These are collective action problems. They require policy solutions.

So what should Congress do? I will offer a few suggestions:

1. Restrict Social Media out of Childhood. Congress should age-restrict social media to 16 or 18 years old, just as it has age restricted other addictive and unsafe substances for kids, like alcohol and tobacco.

2. Require App Store Age Verification and Parental Consent. Congress should pass a law, like the App Store Accountability Act, requiring app stores to verify the age of the user and for minors require parental consent for each app download or in-app purchase.

3. Pass a Federal Age-Verification Law for Pornography Websites, like the SCREEN Act. Nineteen states have now done so. We need protection nationwide. Put the onus back where it belongs on the porn sites, rather than parents, to restrict children's access.

4. Open up Greater Legal Accountability for Online Platforms by reforming Section 230 and by further empowering existing authorities like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and states attorneys general with more tools like product design liabilities for platforms.

5. Ensure there is Legal Liability for AI so that companies will be compelled to mitigate harms to children from AI or otherwise pay the costs. Generative AI products should not receive Section 230 immunity.

As a mother of three, and on behalf of countless parents across America, we NEED your help. Thank you for your time. I look forward to your questions.

You can read my full written testimony here and watch the entire hearing here.