Establishes the "stop online predators act"

• Democratic39
• Republican12

◆ The sponsor's argument

Why Andrew Gounardes says this is needed

Child safety experts estimate that there are approximately 500,000 online predators active on any given day. According to the FBI, over 50% of the victims of online sexploitation are between the ages of 12 and 15, and an estimated 89% of sexual advances occur in Internet chatrooms or through instant messaging (Kraut, M. E. (2024). Children and Grooming / Online Predators Child Crime Prevention & Safety Center. Childsafe- ty.losangelescriminallawyer.pro; Child Crime Prevention & Safety Center). Fifty-eight percent of parents report being concerned about online predation, yet only seven percent of the targets of such behavior were aware that their children had received inappropriate content from an adult. Forty percent of children in grades four through eight report chatting online with a stranger, and Internet use amongst three to four- year-olds has doubled within the last five years (Lazic, M. (2023, May 19). How Many Predators are Online Each Day? (Online Predators Statis- tics). Legaljobs.io). Virtual platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, X, and Roblox, where adult users can collect vast troves of information about child users and lure them into private chats within minutes, have become veritable hunting grounds for pedophiles in the modern era. Over 80% of child sex crimes can be traced back to social media, and reports of online child exploitation surged by a staggering 106% in the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown when many households moved online ((Lazic, M. (2023, May 19). How Many Predators are Online Each Day? (Online Preda- tors Statistics). Legaljobsio). Many platforms have thus taken the responsible step of creating certain "privacy by default" settings for users under a certain age, meaning that the strictest possible privacy settings are applied without manual input. Such settings limit which types of users can message and tag underage accounts. Despite these efforts, however, critical gaps in the online safety net remain: platforms turn a blind eye to the millions of underage users who lie about their age to create an account, bolstered by the 26-year-old federal Children's Online Privacy and Protection Act (COPPA) which only holds them liable if they have "actual knowledge" that a user is under the age of 13 - a high legal bar which is virtually impossible to clear in court. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) openly admits that there is nothing in COPPA to prevent users from lying about their age, assuring companies that they need only establish a date-of-birth portal for users to self-report age - despite such portals' notorious unreliability (Federal Trade Commission. (2020, July 20). Complying with COPPA: Frequently asked questions. Federal Trade Commission.). Furthermore, even where a platform does know a user's age, not all have chosen to deploy privacy by default for minors' accounts. The popular gaming app Roblox, for example, the subject of several sweeping press investigations and state Attorney General actions from at least four different states, previously boasted an open chat function wherein a gamer of any age can post anything they want in a game chat and then privately message other users. Roblox only curtailed the private chats after a barrage of public criticism, and child safety features remain inconsistent across apps, with many dependent upon proactive "family pairing" by the parent and minor - a friction-full process that data tells us barely any parents bother to undertake (Tenbarge, Kat. "Fewer than 1% of Parents Use Social Media Tools to Monitor Their Children's Accounts, Tech Companies Say." NBC News, 29 Mar. 2024, www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-med ia/fewer-1-parents-use-social-media-tools-monitor-childrens -accounts-tech-rcna145592.) This bill, known as the Stop Online Predators Act (SOPA), requires social media and gaming platforms that feature user-to-user messaging to undertake several common sense steps to protect kids online. Firstly, it requires them to turn off

This is the sponsor's own case for the bill, quoted from their memorandum. It is not Agora's description of what the bill does.