One man helping teenagers directly lobby Congress to pass legislation holding Big Tech accountable for how it manages their data and online activity.
Parents and lawmakers have become outspoken about the growing mental health problems that youth in the United States face. Whether it is the effects of Instagram on self-image, the addictive properties of TikTok, or the abusive ways that adults may treat youth on social media, technology has become a focus for many lawmakers.
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One of the rising advocates for a change in policy is Jason Frost, the founder of the teenager-focused nonprofit organization Wired Human. Frost is using the voices of middle and high school students to seek a bipartisan response from Congress to the problems for youth created by today's technologies.
The desire to protect the youth offers a "revolution of healing the divide in the U.S. around a theme that we can all get behind, that we all can be inspired, which is we can do the best for our children in this country," Frost, 35, told the Washington Examiner.
Wired Human describes itself as "committed to preserving the innocence of childhood" by providing training, tools, and political advocacy for teaching teenagers digital responsibility.
Frost has also been gathering a "youth coalition" to present its concerns about the state of the laws to lawmakers. This coalition of a dozen young adults visited several lawmakers' offices on Thursday and Friday to advocate the passage of the Kids Online Safety Act and the EARN IT Act.
KOSA, as introduced by Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), would require platforms to take steps to prevent a defined set of harms to minors, including the promotion of suicide, substance abuse, sexual exploitation, and drug or alcohol use. It would also require social media companies to implement controls for users, including options for limiting screen time, restricting addictive features, and limiting access to user profiles. The management tools would default to the strictest settings for users younger than 16.
Conversations around KOSA have been "incredible," Frost said. Wired Human's youth coalition, which included students from Virginia, Tennessee, Oregon, Florida, and Washington, D.C., met with Blackburn and Blumenthal on Thursday to offer their views on the importance of KOSA. It also met with other offices to convince senators to support the bill, although Frost did not say which offices would meet with them.
The EARN IT Act would amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a crucial part of telecommunications law protecting websites from being sued for content posted by users, by stripping away the protections if the platforms violate federal and state laws related to child sexual abuse material. EARN IT was considered by Congress in 2020 and 2022 but failed to get traction due to opposition from privacy advocates. They alleged the bill would weaken the encryption attached to private messages or force platforms to report their users for unfavorable speech.
Privacy threats are not a concern as long as "you're being extremely specific about what you're trying to go after online, which is sexual abuse images of children online," Frost argued.
He said the tech industry uses the concerns about speech and privacy as a "get out of jail free" card to avoid being held accountable.
Frost has worked with teenagers in religious ministry and international language training for over a decade alongside his wife, Lisa. It wasn't until 2017, when he heard about kids being lured into adult male apartments at the age of 14 and other adults abusing the platforms for their self-gain, that the effects of social media came to his attention. The couple penned a book, The Glass Between Us, in 2020 to offer a "value-based approach" to the challenges surrounding families managing social media. They then launched Wired Human, whose primary focus is on providing educational tools and training to teenagers and parents to help them figure out how to navigate the digital world. This includes tools to keep kids safe, solutions for breaking destructive media habits, and showing youth how to avoid online harm.
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The organization has also met in closed-door meetings with several Big Tech company employees to ask them to take creative action to answer the problems facing teenagers today. Frost declined to name which companies.
Frost's end goal is to "create pathways where kids are empowered leaders with the autonomy to make great choices" about technology.