Free Expression, Privacy & Data, Reproductive Rights
Ms. Magazine – Restricting Access to Information Online Won’t Keep Teens Safe. It Will Only Erode Democratic Rights
This op-ed – authored by CDT’s Michal Luria and Aliya Bhatia – first appeared in Ms. Magazine on January 23, 2024. A portion of the text has been pasted below.
Keeping young people safe online has long been an important goal of policy conversations, and that focus has only increased since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. More young people are online now than ever before, and screen time amongst youth has skyrocketed. They rely on online spaces as lifelines for community, identity, formation, education, and secure access to information about reproductive care and LGBTQ+ identity that parents and teachers may not make available or have the resources to discuss.
Yet, the absence of federal privacy protections leaves individuals, including children, vulnerable to sensitive data falling into the wrong hands. And the use of sensitive data to micro-target compelling and personalized advertisements all around the web irks young people and adults alike.
In response, young people have called for more tools to navigate the web safely. Some teens want more short-term or ephemeral content online, more control over their algorithmic feeds, and the ability to delete data collected or inferred about them. When one of the authors of this piece interviewed over 30 young people about their online safety last fall, many teens asked for better reporting, blocking and user filtering tools so they could minimize unwanted encounters online while still using the messaging services they depended on to stay in touch with friends, family, classmates and loved ones. The undercurrent of their ask: Help us help ourselves.
