The House Judiciary Committee took what seemed like a trip back to the heyday of panic over violent video games and media during a hearing on “Parenting in the Digital Age.”
The presentation was put on by Homer Police Department Lt. Ryan Browning and ran nearly two hours on Monday with a scattershot of information that ranged from examples pulled from video game “Grand Theft Auto” to a dictionary of young-person internet talk and emjoi decoding to real-world examples of young people driven to suicide by online bullying and extortion.
Buried among the presentation was some good advice about talking to your children, and building trust so they can come to parents with problems and resources for when and if they run into problems online. A complicated, nuanced solution for a complicated, nuanced problem, but legislators wondered if there’s an easier way.
House Judiciary Committee Chair Rep. Sarah Vance, R-Homer, said she’s working on legislation addressing the issue and asked what his recommendations were.
“I told you I’m not an expert,” Lt. Browning said, laughing. “I think the biggest thing is education. Somehow, one, getting parents to understand what this is doing to our kids, and I don’t know how you would legislate that. How are you going to stop somebody from accessing the internet or somebody from communicating with their kid? People are going to do what they’re going to do.”
Another legislator asked if passing a law limiting screen time to one hour for children would fix the problem, Lt. Browning said he doubt it would actually be enforceable noting that kids are always a couple of steps ahead of parents in understanding how to work around things like that.
But the most head-turning question came from extreme-right Eagle River Rep. Jamie Allard, who wanted to know not what to do about online pornography but the pornography she says is filling Anchorage’s public schools.
“So, there are library books within the Anchorage School District that is pornography with adults and the pictures and then the books. Kids have access to this, but I’ve been told numerous from legal … they can’t do anything, it’s a local issue. I’ve spoken to police, too,” she said. “So, my concern is that’s pornography, I don’t care how the child has it and these children are being exposed to it. Howcome we, as a society, can’t give the books to the police and say, ‘It’s pornography.’ How come we’re not able to hold those individuals accountable or arrested?”
Lt. Browning lamented about how “I don’t think there’s any DA’s office that has the stomach to take a case like that.”
“I wish police would arrest somebody for it,” Allard said.
Here’s the exchange:
Why it matters
Aside from Allard being Allard, internet safety, particularly when framed around the safety of kids, has been one of the leading justifications for efforts by both Republicans and Democrats to institute new laws that could impact Big Tech amid the most recent push for changes on how the internet is regulated. Critics warn, though, that it may come at the expense of free speech and privacy.
From a recent article by Vox covering the latest Congressional efforts on this issue:
The desire to protect kids from internet harms and abuses is stronger than ever in the 118th Congress, making it increasingly likely that at least one law that purports to do so actually gets passed. But critics say that, in practice, those bills may not help children, and may exist at the expense of free speech and privacy.
And what critics had to say about the two leading pieces of legislation:
Not everyone is on board with protecting children this way, however. Internet privacy and free speech advocates have criticized KOSA and EARN IT, saying that the laws may actually do the opposite of what their supporters claim. EARN IT, opponents say, could force services to drop encryption, exposing users’ communications to law enforcement (or anyone else who can get access to them) or make platforms monitor their own users’ public and private speech. They also say it won’t be an effective tool to fight child sexual abuse material, which is its supposed purpose.
Critics of KOSA believe that the legislation would make censorship on platforms worse, and that it’s sure to be overbroad, because platforms won’t want to risk allowing anything that might get them in trouble. Also, they believe KOSA gives parents too much power over what their children (specifically, teenagers) can see and do, and might force platforms to create age verification systems that would hurt everyone’s privacy, as all users would have to submit personal information to a third party to prove their age just to use a service.
We may see something like that come to Alaska’s Legislature.
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.
