"We see it every day," Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) told CBN recently. "Children that are cyberbullied, children that are pulled into sextortion …. In the physical world, there are laws that prevent you from selling alcohol [or] tobacco, having kids enter into contracts, pushing them into pornography. There are laws against that – but in the virtual space, there is nothing."
Blackburn is co-sponsor (with Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut) of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which passed the Senate on a 91-3 vote last summer but failed to come up for a vote in the House. The two senators plan to reintroduce the measure in this Congress.
Specifically, KOSA:
- Requires social media platforms to provide minors with options to protect their information, disable addictive product features, and opt out of personalized algorithmic recommendations.
- Gives parents new controls to help protect their children and spot harmful behaviors and provides parents and educators with a dedicated channel to report harmful behavior.
- Creates a duty for online platforms to prevent and mitigate specific dangers to minors (e.g., promotion of suicide, eating disorders).
- Ensures that parents and policymakers know whether online platforms are taking meaningful steps to address risks to children.
Hundreds reported every week
AFN talked with Tim Nester, senior director of communications at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. He said it's heartbreaking – and sadly, very true.
"We've heard from [the National Center on Missing and Exploited Children] that right now, there's an average of 812 reports or so of sextortion per week – and these are just the ones that are reported," he reported.
It often happens, he explains, when those individuals pretend to be teenagers' peers.
"It's such a devastating form of exploitation where these predators will trick and coerce their victims – usually young boys, but also girls – into a situation where now they can be blackmailed with money or with more images or more explicit material that they can then use against them," said Nester. "It's horrific to think that this could be happening in your own home."
And it all starts with social media, says the NCOSE spokesman.
"… That is usually where they're going to connect with folks who are posing as someone their age," he continued. "A lot of times we'll see they'll pose as a cute girl who claims she's from your school; and she'll connect with you, a young teenage boy, and they'll look through your friends list and they'll start naming people, [claiming they] know so and so … and they'll convince you that they're real."
Parents do have steps they can take, aside from legislation that may be handed down by Congress and the President.
"For some families, that's going to mean we are going to keep our kids off of certain devices or off of certain platforms until a certain age," Nester explained. "You know your kids best. There's an action you can take to make a difference long-term – [but] at its core it's going to be at the legislative level."
Another related piece of legislation is currently on its way to President Trump's desk. It's known as the TAKE IT DOWN Act* – and it requires social media platforms to take down explicit images within 48 hours of a survivor's request, including AI-generated and deepfake images. Passed by the Senate in February, it passed the U.S. House on Monday 409-2.
* Tools to Address Known Exploitation by Immobilizing Technological Deepfakes on Websites and Networks Act.
