Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., plans to turn his focus in the current Congress to a legislative package aimed at protecting children online — including setting the social media age threshold at 16.
In an interview with NBC News, Hawley laid out some headlines of what his agenda will include, including:
- Requiring social media companies to verify the age of their users.
- Giving parents the right to demand that technology companies erase their children’s data.
- Commissioned a comprehensive congressional mental health study on the impact of social media on children.
“For me, this is about protecting kids, protecting their mental health, protecting their safety,” Hawley said. “There is ample evidence that major tech companies put profit before protecting children online.”
Since his election to the Senate in 2018, Hawley has made tech industry scrutiny his political brand and pushed for the tech giants to be broken up and TikTok’s reach limited.
Those efforts were crippled after Hawley sparked bipartisan outrage over his infamous photo taken prior to the January 6 riot and his formal objection to the state election results. But he has since pushed legislation with Democrats on technology and China nonetheless. His efforts also often went against more traditional conservative economic theory, but have gained popularity among right-wing segments baffled by the industry’s broad influence and perceived anti-conservative bias.
Hawley surmised that over the past decade, tech companies have “run a giant social experiment on our kids, where big tech makes big amounts of money, collects big amounts of data, then sells it and makes even more money off it.”
“And children get hurt in the process,” he added. “And so the whole point of this agenda is, let’s do something real and tangible that’s going to protect kids online and give power back to parents.”
Hawley will release individual pieces of legislation in the coming months and expressed hope his efforts could spark bipartisan interest in the divided Congress.
“I’ve had a lot of conversations with Democrats over the years on this issue in general and various parts of it,” Hawley said. “I don’t see this as a partisan issue. I mean, this is about protecting kids from the irresponsible and predatory big tech companies. Any parent in America, regardless of your political affiliation, or if you don’t have one, can agree .”
Hawley’s announcement came hours before Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, in which President Joe Biden was expected to call for improved data privacy online and a bipartisan effort to ban advertising targeting youth, among other measures.
“We must hold social media companies accountable for the for-profit experiment they are conducting on our children,” Biden wrote in a Wall Street Journal. opinion last monthadding, “There will be many policy issues that we can’t agree on in the new Congress, but bipartisan proposals to protect our privacy and our children; to prevent discrimination, sexual exploitation and cyberstalking; and to address anti-competitive behavior should not separate us.”
Late last year, Biden signed legislation led by Hawley that banned the Chinese social media app TikTok from most government devices. That legislative impetus came as the company’s ties to China come under increased scrutiny in Congress.
Hawley seeks to advance that effort and late last month announced plans to introduce legislation banning TikTok in the US
Democrats have also called for TikTok to be restricted, with Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado to The New York Times this month that Apple and Google would have to remove TikTok from their app stores over national security concerns.
As for his upcoming legislative effort aimed at protecting children online, Hawley, the parent of three young children, said, “I don’t want to do things that are just symbolic.”
“We are looking for ways to give parents and children, where appropriate, actual legal rights where they can force the companies to do XYZ or go to court,” he said. “So I think giving real legal power, shifting power from the tech companies to parents and children through enforceable rights, including the right to sue, I think is an important point.”