Parents of Trans Youth Fear KOSA’s Trojan Horse
The Kids Online Safety Act is making its way through congress, but critics including vulnerable families of trans kids fear conservatives will misuse the new power to target LGBTQ+ content the bill could give red states.
by Evan Urquhart
Are Trans youth likely to be protected or harmed by the Kids Online Safety Act? Over 100 parents of trans and gender-diverse youth released an open letter to lawmakers today voicing their fears that the bill, shorthanded as KOSA, could counter-intuitively make the internet less safe for kids like theirs.
KOSA presents itself as a bipartisan measure to protect children from predatory practices by social media companies. It creates a duty for these companies (and other covered entities including video games) to “act in the best interest of minors using the applications or services, including by mitigating harms that may arise from that use.” This language has been criticized by members of the LGBTQ+ community who fear a Trojan horse allowing conservative state attorneys general to adopt overbroad, ideologically-driven definitions of harm to children that would allow them to censor the LGBTQ+ community’s presence online.
In a country where protecting children from school shootings has been used as a rationale to put more guns in schools it should come as no surprise that what constitutes protecting children is a divisive question, one with very different answers depending on one’s political frame. When it comes to KOSA, such questions are central to the debate over the bill, and to the concerns of the parents who are opposing this bill.
screenshot from the open letter opposing KOSA
There's good reason for such concerns. One of the bill’s co-sponsors, Republican Marsha Blackburn, has been clear: The harm she hopes to use KOSA to protect children from is “the transgender in this culture.” That’s from an interview posted to Twitter by the conservative Family Policy Alliance, where Blackburn flagged protecting children from “the transgender” as one of the top issues conservatives should be taking action on. Un the video Blackburn explicitly presents KOSA as an answer, a measure to prevent children from being “indoctrinated” online. In a similar vein, the Heritage Foundation has endorsed the idea that protecting kids from online harm with KOSA means censoring “trans content” online.
Democratic proponents of KOSA have sought to assuage these fears by amending the bill to narrow the types of harms social media companies will be held responsible for preventing and mitigating in young people. However critics such as Fight for the Future, who organized the parents’ letter, say these changes don’t do enough to address the central concern that state attorneys general can use the bill as a pretext to target LGBTQ+ content, for example by using “cherry picked “evidence” from ideologically aligned doctors, that LGBTQ content increases (Sec. 3(a)(1)) ‘anxiety, depression,... and suicidal behaviors.’”
Advocates for KOSA stress concerns about predatory advertising targeting children as well as the addictive nature of social media use. The advocacy group Fairplay, who have positioned themselves in opposition to big tech and envision “a childhood beyond brands” are a particularly strong supporter of the law. A July 27 statement celebrating a senate vote to advance KOSA and a companion bill out of committee by Fairplay stated, “In the 25 years since Congress last passed meaningful online protections for children, social media platforms have honed their manipulative design techniques in order to addict children to their products and capture young people’s attention and data. As a result, countless young people are harmed online in serious and preventable ways every day.” In response to pressure from the LGBTQ+ community, Fairplay released a report this past June claiming that LGBTQ+ youth are disproportionately harmed by predatory practices, and that KOSA would provide necessary protections for such kids.
The signatories of today’s open letter weren’t buying it, and their open letter links to news coverage of a surgeon general’s report that said social media use can be a lifeline for LGBTQ+ youth, particularly those in unsupportive homes.
Fairplay went further to address concerns today, releasing a statement that says, in part: “We spent the last week consulting with attorneys, leading queer advocates, first amendment experts, and platform design experts who all agreed that any attempt by conservative AGs to censor LGBTQ+ content would not succeed. The First Amendment protects against an AG driven by ideology making evidence-free claims to try to censor speech they do not like. On top of that, KOSA explicitly protects any content that is independently requested by young users - for example, if a young person were to search for content about gender affirming care, that content is protected. We are confident that any attempt at such a bigoted stunt would not result in any censorship of LGBTQ+ content, even preemptive censorship.”
The First Amendment, notably, protects school libraries from censorship. The Fourteenth Amendment protects trans people from discrimination based on their sex, and its due process clause protects the right of parents to direct their children’s medical care. Constitutional protections are currently faltering when it comes to the LGBTQ+ community’s rights in red states. It makes sense that parents of trans youth would be particularly wary of state government overreach, even if the constitution ought to protect families like theirs. In states like Texas, Missouri, and Tennessee, officials have repeatedly sought to find ways to twist existing laws to make them a weapon against trans people, particularly trans youth and their families, constitution be damned.
Julie from Indiana is the parent of a trans young person in a red state. In a comment accompanying her signing of the open letter she wrote,“Indiana's legislative assault on my family's rights have been extremely stressful and harmful, helping to incite hateful personal attacks. My kids feel isolated here and their closest friends live elsewhere. They talk, laugh, and play together via the internet. Considering how far-reaching Indiana's anti-trans legislation already is, I fear KOSA would create an even more slippery slope.”
