A new bill, called the “Parents Decide Act,” has been introduced in the House that would require operating system vendors to verify the age of all its users. Lots of people more qualified than me have already had a ton to say about this topic. I might suggest this blog post from technically-good.ca, which isn’t so much about this bill as its Canadian counterpart, but which makes many great points about why age gating is such a bad idea.
Setting aside the surveillance aspects, the data siphoning, the impact to digital sovereignty efforts, and other countless downsides, I want to focus specifically on the impact I think it could have on the well-being and future prospects for young people.
Parents have a duty and a responsibility to look after their children, and teach them the skills they need to grow into happy and prosperous adults. That said, I don’t think parents’ rights completely supersede the rights of children.
Children are people. It’s not a personal belief or a feeling, it’s a fact of reality. And teenagers are especially people. Just because someone is not yet of age doesn’t mean they’re not fully capable of thinking for themselves and acting according to those thoughts. Many of them drive and have jobs and a whole slate of responsibilities. I don’t know if you can remember what it was like when you were a teenager, but there are so many stresses and deadlines and new social circumstances to navigate. Teenagers aren’t so much children as they are proto-adults.
I have met fifteen-year-olds that act more mature than most of the adults I know, and there are some adults I know who seem to act as if they never even started high school. It’s all relative, and subjective, and messy.
The thing that worries me most about these age gating measures is that it’s a direct attempt to control access to knowledge for people who are at a time in their lives when they most dearly need access to it. And specifically, to keep information away from children so they can remain sheltered and have their “information” drip-fed to them by their parents.
God forbid someone under 18 be able to use a computer, lest they learn about LGBTQ+ people, or how to have safe consensual sex, or that there are people out in the world experiencing genocide by “the good guys,” or even that the world might not have been created in seven days!
I weep for the future where young folks don’t have access to scientific or cultural information that may challenge their worldviews, or expose them to new lines of thought. I can’t imagine where my life would be today if I had didn’t have the means to access information that was otherwise kept away from me.
The internet is not a perfect place. Far from it. There are dangerous people out there. Predators. Creeps. People who bully, who get pleasure out of exposing people to harmful imagery. Not even that, most social media is absolute mental health wildfire. Doom scrolling is not healthy. So much of this stuff is plain bad for you. That goes for kids and adults.
But there are good, healthy communities online too. I’ve spent most of my life being part of them. I started in middle school!
Empowering young people to have the frameworks and skillsets to navigate these challenges, set appropriate boundaries, and identify potential harms is key for their personal growth, and the health of our society as a whole.
Computing should be a right for everyone, regardless of age. Parents have a responsibility to supervise and guide children in their computer use. Trying to shift that responsibility further up the chain will have many devastating impacts. The only solace I can take is that if this thing happens, I know that kids are incredibly resourceful at getting around censorship and technical barriers. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
You can’t stop the signal.