Online Safety for Kids Is About To Change
February 3, 2022
By: Lynette Brehm
How laws are changing to help protect children online.
If you have wondered why big companies like Twitter, Facebook, ShapChat get away with allowing abusive content on their platforms, the answer is simple.
A Federal law written in 1996 protects social media companies from being responsible for user-generated content distributed on their platforms.
This is about to change and it will forever make the Internet safer for our kids.
Online predators post, trade and distribute images of child sexual abuse on platforms such as Twitter, SnapChat and Facebook. It is illegal to possess and distribute these images. But it happens everyday online.
There is an escalating volume of horrifying images and videos of online child sexual abuse.
National Center of Missing and Exploited Children, 2022
The National Center of Missing and Exploited Children has a Cybertip line where any person or company can report suspected online abuse of children.
In 2020 they received 21.7 million reports on suspected online abuse, a 28% increase from 2019*.
The Earn It Act of 2022 (The Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act) was introduced Monday, January 31, 2022 in the Senate.
Here are the important facts:
Bi-partisan legislation
Holds social media companies accountable if they knowingly participate in distributing child sexual abuse images and do nothing about it (in other words the Earn It Act removes immunity)
Establishes a commission of survivors, technology representatives, and government stakeholders to create recommendations and voluntary best practices for tech companies to respond to the global pandemic of online sexual exploitation of children.
Discontinues the use of the term “child pornography” throughout the criminal code. Pornography implies consent and a child cannot consent to be filmed in a sexual nature, abused or exploited. The proposed new term is CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material).
What can you do?
To show support for the Earn It Act, contact your senator here. Share this email with others who are concerned about protecting kids online.
Post online about this issue and use the hashtags:
#detect2protect
#endchildabuseonline
#protectkidsonline
If you have questions about this information or want to learn more about The Earn It Act, please visit: https://www.missingkids.org/blog/2022/earn-it-act-2022
*https://www.missingkids.org/blog/2022/earn-it-act-2022
