Kids Don’t Think Congress Has Their Best Interests In Mind With Their Grandstanding ‘Protect The Children’ Hearing

We’ve covered a few stories this week related to the Senate hearing on “kids safety” and there’s going to be a lot more in the coming weeks as those same Senators grandstand and yell about “protect the children!” and generally make fools of themselves. I think Casey Newton’s summary of the spectacle is about right:

But while Congress is generally more educated on tech subjects today than it was when the backlash began in 2017, the hearings still play out much as they did at the beginning: with outraged lawmakers scolding, questioning, and interrupting their witnesses for hours on end, while bills that might address their concerns continue to languish without ever being passed. With so little of substance accomplished, the press can only comment on the spectacle: of the loudest protesters, the harshest insults, and the tensest exchanges. 

The whole thing is theater, not legislating (and certainly not for educating our lawmakers).

And while there were some children used as props by the lawmakers, it’s interesting to hear that an awful lot of kids seem dubious that Congress actually has their interests at heart.

There’s a great piece in the Washington Post by Taylor Lorenz, looking at what actual kids have been saying about these bills… and they don’t seem particularly supportive.

“These senators don’t actually care about protecting kids, they just want to control information,” one teenager posted. “If congress wants to protect children, they should pass a … privacy law,” another teenager said. Others in the server accused the lawmakers of “trying to demonize the CEOs to push their … bills,” which were often described with profanity.

[….]

“The internet allows people to see different ideas,” said Nathan, a 15-year old in New York who agreed to speak to The Post on the condition that they be identified only by their first name. “They can hear different ideas. They can learn about LGBT people. They can see so many things. These bills are created to censor and hide children. They are created to cut people off from the outside world.”

Nathan, who is nonbinary, said the internet helped them overcome an eating disorder. They worried the information that helped them would no longer be accessible if social media platforms were required to wall off certain topics such as eating disorders.

The most poignant quote in the article to me was this one:

“Every person who claims to care about kids online is ignoring the fact that the internet is the only space left for kids,” May said. “In real life, you’re dealing with mass shooters, no public spaces that are free and nearby. Nobody has money to go hang out at a mall or anything.”

I keep bringing up the study from last year in the Journal of Pediatrics, mainly because it strongly suggests a leading cause of the mental health crisis we see today is that kids no longer have spaces they can go to hang out with other kids without parents hovering over them at all times. Social media has become that space for many kids… so of course, adults are trying to shut it down.