On the Cruz-Schatz Bill
A slightly personal essay about internet safety.
Perhaps my most controversial progressive take is that I think freedom of the internet should to some degree supersede children being disallowed from the internet. Which is why it’s interesting to me that the lede is being buried so soundly in every article and announcement I read on the Cruz-Schatz Protecting Kids on Social Media Act. While the Cruz-Schatz bill’s ban on social media access for kids younger than 13 is a fairly uncontroversially good idea, the bill also contains a clause I cannot get behind, which is mysteriously missing from several announcements of the bill — its requirement for consent from the parent or guardian of minors 13-17 years old to have a social media account.
Brian Schatz is right that “there is no good reason for a nine-year-old to be on Instagram or Snapchat” — 8-12 year olds just do not need to be on the internet. My best internet experiences began around age 13 and 14, when I had somewhat more developed critical thinking skills (not fully!). From 2019 to 2021, overall screen use among tweens (ages 8 to 12) increased by 17 percent, with tweens using screens for five hours and 33 minutes per day. That’s a horrifying increase. As a tween, the only screen use I had was typing up essays on the computer and playing the Sims — and that was a great use of my time, thank you very much. The algorithmic clause, too, is a good idea — preventing the use of tracking algorithms for kids 13-17 strikes me as a great way of preventing data use by companies without actually restricting internet access.
If you were to read the description of this bill on Brian Schatz’s website, you would read the following goals:
Prohibit social media platforms from allowing children under the age of 13 to create or maintain social media accounts;
Prohibit social media companies from pushing targeted content using algorithms to users under the age of 17;
Provide the FTC and state attorneys general authority to enforce the provisions of the bill; and
Follow existing CIPA framework, with changes, to require schools to work in good faith to limit social media on their federally-funded networks, which many schools already do.
So why bury the lede of one of the most important clauses of the bill, as per the actual text:
Further, platforms must take reasonable steps to (1) require affirmative consent from the parent or guardian of a minor who is at least 13 years old to create an account for the minor on the platform, and (2) provide the parent or guardian with the ability to revoke such consent.
It’s because that’s something potentially worth objecting to.
Growing up as a queer girl with a complicated relationship with her parents and a minuscule social circle, social media was one of my best escapes. When I was fourteen, I figured out I was gay via the internet, something I did not disclose to my parents for six months. I spent most of my teen years getting vaguely famous on Goodreads and making friends on my fairly-anonymous Tumblr and my-less anonymous account on Book Twitter (which was a cesspool, but a cesspool with some pretty fantastic friends built in). While in my high school, I was one of two out lesbians in the entire school until my senior year, my online network was thriving with other people my age and with my interests. When I was sixteen, I met one of them in Paris; through the pandemic, we Facetimed; I’m meeting another of them — from Australia! — this year. Up until senior year, I think my time on social media gave me more social skills than my time in high school did.
Through that, I was a B+/A- student at an extremely competitive prep school — a failure which one of my parents was convinced was the fault of my reading hobby. (The idea of removing all books from my room was floated several times.) My priority was meant to be school; I was not a being who existed to have things I loved. My parents did not know I had a Tumblr and probably would not have approved. If I had been required to receive parental consent to be on Goodreads, there is every statistical chance that my outlet would’ve been revoked.
I was sixteen or seventeen years old for most of these experiences. That’s not young. Sixteen-year-olds are driving on the road alone. Seventeen-year-olds start their first year of college without even having skipped a grade to do so. Is it possible that sixteen and seventeen-year-olds are old enough to make the decision on whether having a certain form of social media is good for them? For what it’s worth, my momentary Goodreads fame has been more notable on resumes than having a 4.0 GPA — rather than a measly 3.7 — ever would have been.
I understand that the instinctual reaction to this by parents is to see this as defiance: Maybe her parents should have been making her choices. After all, they had her best interests at heart. I understand this instinct. But I want to point out that requires for every parent to have their child’s best interest at heart — and to be right about what that best interest is. Do you think this is true? For the record, I don’t.
As per The Hill, advocacy groups — including LGBTQ groups — support some parts of this legislation, but not the parental consent features. As per Danny Weiss of Common Sense Media:
“If you don’t change the way the sites are operated and change the way data is stored, collected and sold, then once a parent gives consent for a child to go on social media, they’re in the same cesspool of the internet we’re in today,” Weiss said.
In order to genuinely protect kids from real danger on the internet — including falling down extremist pipelines — there needs to be real change within tech companies. But these stopgaps won’t solve that problem; they’ll only stop the kids who actually need the internet from accessing it.
RELATED NEWS (5/9/2025): Governor Youngkin signed a bill that only allows kids ages 16 and under one hour on social media per day.