[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 77 (Monday, May 9, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2373-S2374]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                Internet

  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam President, it has been a wonderful weekend in 
Tennessee. We had the annual West Tennessee Strawberry Festival out in 
Humboldt, TN. Quite honestly, I think the strawberries were better and 
sweeter this year than ever before. There was wonderful strawberry 
shortcake and deserts. It was a wonderful weekend. It provided such a 
great opportunity to talk with parents and to hear from Tennesseans, 
from moms and dads about things that were of concern to them.
  I had a mom make a comment to me that I think each of us should 
listen to and take to heart. I know the Presiding Officer knows how 
hard a parent's job is because she is a mom.
  I look at my children and my grandchildren, and I thought about this 
lady's comment. She said, you know, when she was growing up, she felt 
like that when she came home, that was the safe harbor; that is where 
she knew she was going to be safe. But today, she said she feels like 
many times, the enemy is within those four walls because of what 
children are exposed to online.
  Like many parents, she began to pay more attention during COVID, and 
what she has found out has just astounded her. Like many parents, she 
feels the hardest part of her job is keeping her children safe and 
providing them with the environment that helps them grow into the very 
best person they could possibly be.
  I really related to that. My husband often would say: We need to 
teach our children how to love and how to laugh and how to work and how 
to pray. That is something that we have done. We have raised our 
children so that they would love one another and their fellow man and 
love this country and appreciate the opportunities that we are given. 
We have raised them to believe in their faith and to exercise that 
faith every single day. We have also taught them and reared them to 
believe in a very purposeful life--always giving more than you take and 
leaving things in better shape than you found them.

  Now, as Chuck and I reared our family, what we didn't want to do was 
hand down a bunch of mandates to the kids and not give them 
explanations. What we tried to do was to teach them and give them the 
knowledge that they would be able to function without us and would 
develop that discernment and make those wise decisions. I know that 
that is something that most parents do: teach those children so that 
they can make wise decisions on their own and leave the door open so 
when they feel threatened or vulnerable, they know they can come to you 
and talk about it.
  On this point, Big Tech and the radical left have one thing in 
common. Their interests are best served if parents are not spending 
time parenting, because what Big Tech and many of the radicals are 
doing is using social media platforms to take children who are 
vulnerable and then push them into actions on social media platforms. 
It is, indeed, a toxic environment for our children on these platforms. 
That online element is at the top of a long list of things that have 
parents really worried about what is going on in this country. Summer 
is coming on, and parents are paying attention to this.
  They are looking at other concerns. Inflation has absolutely 
decimated their savings accounts. When I talk to Tennesseans, sometimes 
they will talk about how much money they could save during the Trump 
years, and they are glad they did because inflation is now eating away 
at those savings that they had banked. Crime in the streets and drugs 
in our communities have turned the nightly news into a horror show. 
People cannot believe the way crime has grown. Much of it is driven by 
that open southern border.
  Parents are telling me that they are a little bit unsettled that they 
can't trust what their kids are learning in school in that those 
lessons are going to be in line with history, with civics, with 
reality, and this bothers them. It is why we are seeing school board 
races as the hot races of this year. It is why we have--whether it is 
Virginia Beach or San Francisco--people being tossed off of school 
boards. It is because what they were teaching was not in line with our 
Nation's history.
  But, when it comes to the influence of tech, that is where parents 
feel like they are surrounded. As I said, there is a mom who said she 
once thought, inside those four walls, there was safety; but now she 
feels that it is not because of what they are seeing.
  It is difficult for parents to understand how all this screen time is 
affecting their children because Big Tech keeps changing the rules to 
fit their business strategies. Mind you, that business strategy is, How 
many eyeballs can they capture, and how long can they hold them? 
because that means they make more money on the ads that they sell. 
Indeed, Instagram admits they are an ad company. They are an ad 
company. They make money by getting you to watch them. The longer you 
watch or the more deeply you run through a thread, they are making more 
money.
  I would remind my colleagues that many of today's parents grew up 
alongside the tech companies, and now they are watching these tech 
companies have a stranglehold on their children's lives. They are the 
Facebook early adopters, many of today's parents of young children. 
This means that they learned a long time ago that online interactions 
bring out the worst in people. They know that ``once it is on the 
internet, it is there forever'' is true, and they probably wish their 
digital footprints were a little bit smaller now that they have 
children and are looking at it as parents.

  The point is these parents are not anti-tech; they are pro-tech, but 
now their kids are falling into the same traps that they did. They are 
overwhelmed because Big Tech is actively sabotaging their attempts to 
pull their children to safety and away from so much screen time. They 
know that the people who run these social media companies have zero 
desire or incentive to control the flow of toxic content into the 
timeline of underaged users. It is just too lucrative an operation for 
them to give up. As I said, they need those eyeballs; they need them 
glued to the screen.
  Now, when I and other members of the Consumer Protection Subcommittee 
presented executives from Instagram with evidence that they were 
actively enabling predatory content, they claimed our evidence was

[[Page S2374]]

anecdotal. Parents know this was a falsehood, and so do we. By its very 
nature, Snapchat is a predator's dream; TikTok is a hot bed of foreign 
propaganda; Twitter is a free-for-all, and they are going to stay that 
way as long as their executives keep making money. They are following 
the dollar.
  Of the service they provide, they continue to say: Well, it is free. 
The service is free.
  The sad thing is, it is our children who are the product. Our 
children and their usage online--that is the product that these tech 
companies are using to make money and pad their pockets. All you have 
to do is look around at the state of discourse in this country to know 
what this kind of exposure will eventually do to an impressionable 
child, especially after isolation from school lockdowns during COVID.
  This isn't a question of bridging a generational divide. Parents 
understand that they need to be involved in their kids' lives. They 
want to be involved in their children's lives. It is sad and hurtful 
and devastating when they are not involved. They accept that times 
change and that they will have to do their research if they want to 
keep up and make certain that they are keeping their children safe, but 
they will never accept Silicon Valley's argument that they aren't smart 
enough to understand what is going on.
  Unfortunately for Silicon Valley, the Senate has done the impossible 
and rallied behind bipartisan legislation to give parents and kids more 
control over their online experiences, and you are right--Big Tech is 
fighting back.
  Back in February, Senator Blumenthal and I introduced the Kids Online 
Safety Act. Here is what it would do:
  First, it would force platforms to give minors the ability to protect 
their information; disable addictive product features; and opt out of 
algorithmic recommendations.
  Next, it would give parents the ability to help control their kids' 
online experience as well as a dedicated channel to report predatory 
behavior. Predatory content and content that promotes self-harm, 
suicide, and eating disorders to minors will now, indeed, be a problem 
for these platforms to deal with--no more denial or deflection.
  We also included requirements for annual risk assessments and access 
to datasets we can use to assess safety threats to underaged users.
  It should be obvious by now that American parents have had enough of 
powerful people trying to control their children. They have said no 
time and again to the Biden administration's radical socialist agenda. 
They have said no to the racial politics the unions want to inject into 
public school curriculums, and now they are saying no to Silicon 
Valley.
  I think it is our duty to give them the help that they are looking 
for. I urge my colleagues to join Senator Blumenthal and me and support 
the Kids Online Safety Act and to do this in support of parents. They 
are not going to let this issue go. When I talk to moms, this is one of 
the things they talk about the most: as I said, inflation, the border, 
crime in the streets, drugs on the streets, and Big Tech and the harm 
it is bringing to our children. They are going to stay on this issue 
because they know their children's lives and safety depend on it.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. HIRONO. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.