Within a single generation, digital technology has become the primary environment in which children learn, play, and socialize. An estimated 40% of American children spend an hour or less outside a day, but children are averaging 7.5 hours per day on screens. Nearly all teenagers, more than 95 percent, have access to a smartphone, and almost half of teens say they are online “almost constantly.” Roughly 6 in 10 parents of 11- and 12-year-olds say their children have their own smartphones. Even toddlers, ages 2 to 4, spend more than two hours a day on screens.

Children today are watching TV, going online, using tablets, and gaming more than any other generation in American history. But this enormous cultural shift does not come without consequences.

While technology can be a place for connection, learning, and creativity, the availability and accessibility of screentime present new dangers. Children face the risk of harms that can be physical, sexual, emotional, mental, developmental, and ultimately become economic and societal.

In March 2026, for the first time in history, YouTube and Meta were ordered to pay $6 million in damages for designing their platforms to be addictive for children and teens, despite knowing it could harm mental health.

“We have given children the tools of infinite stimulation but denied them the structure and freedom of real-world growth.”

THE ANXIOUS GENERATION, JOHNATHAN HAIDT

The challenge of protecting children online forces critical questions for parents, educators, civic leaders, and elected officials:

• How do I use technology, and what limits and safeguards do I use for myself?
• What rules, limits, and safeguards are in place at home and for my children?
• What policies are in place surrounding technology in schools, and how are they evaluated and enforced?
• How can civic leaders and elected officials help families achieve healthy adoption and use of technology, and protect children online from predators and other dangers?

This Policy Circle Brief explores how families, communities, companies, and policymakers can work together to strike a balance between innovation and safety, exploration and exploitation, and ensure that the same vigilance once devoted to children’s physical safety now extends to the time children spend online.

CASE STUDY: FROM GAMING TO SELF-HARM

Harrison Haynes was 12 years old when he met a stranger on Xbox Live. Neither Harrison nor his parents knew it at the time, but Harrison would become the victim of an online predator.

At first the conversations were harmless, but eventually the “friend” moved casual conversations from the gaming platform to texting. Over time, conversations shifted from gaming into “darker territory.” The “friend” introduced Harrison to pornography, which led to depression and self-harm. Harrison began sneaking out of his bedroom at night to talk with his “friend.” As the grooming continued, Harrison began receiving messages four or five times a day – when he was at school, at extracurricular activities, and during meals with his parents. Eventually, Harrison became a depressed 12- and 13-year-old who was addicted to porn, harming himself, and even contemplated suicide. It was a year before his parents learned about the relationship and rescued Harrison from the situation.

Harrison’s story illustrates a classic case of internet grooming – using the internet to build a relationship with someone with the intention of manipulating and hurting that person. Because the predator has established a “relationship” with the child, the child then struggles to draw a line between right and wrong or recognize the behavior as inappropriate.

Once upon a time, predators lurked in public spaces; today, they reach children directly through devices. The prevalence of children spending time online alone has corresponded with a steep increase in grooming incidents. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), which defines “online enticement” as any situation in which a child is groomed through digital communication for sexual exploitation or abduction, received over 20 million reports of suspected child exploitation through its CyberTipline in 2024 alone. Most instances begin with contact through social media or gaming platforms.

Watch this short explainer video showing how predators use online platforms and how technology is being deployed to detect and stop abuse (6 minutes):

In the case of Harrison Haynes, his predator was an actual person who lived in New Jersey. But the rise of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) means that when children and teens go online, their perpetrators might not even be real.

A recent study by researchers at the University of Illinois examined how teens are using GAI. This information was then compared to the understanding and expectations that the teens’ parents had of the way their children were using the technology. The findings were striking. First, researchers uncovered a significant gap between how parents thought their children were using GAI, and how the technology was actually being consumed and utilized. Second, the research found the teens in the study “treat GAI chatbots as therapy assistants, friends, or confidants, building trust and deep relationships with these AI entities. One user describes Character.ai chatbot as their ‘free therapy,’ and another says, ‘Character.ai is the only place where I can openly talk through and navigate through my issues.’”

Other important information regarding GAI and the use of AI technology by children and teens:

• AI chatbots and content are unregulated and expose teens to extreme or harmful content.
• AI-generated child exploitation material is growing at an unprecedented speed without mechanisms for accountability.
• Teens are increasingly exposed to persuasive misinformation that they struggle to detect.

CONSTANT CONNECTION IS NOW A PUBLISH HEALTH ISSUE: WHERE GOVERNMENT CAN STEP IN

Perhaps the most significant change over the last decade is that children’s online experiences are no longer confined to the four walls of their home. No matter what ground rules parents set for their children regarding TV, internet, smart phones, tablets, and other devices, most children will encounter technology in dozens of forms each day. This has transformed the debate over constant connection from a private family decision to a public health issue.

How States Are Addressing Youth Use of Technology

Years ago, technology in school was limited to “computer class.” Today, 9 in 10 public schools have 1:1 computing programs that provide every student with a device, costing more than $30 billion a year. These devices are taxpayer-funded and moderated by school professionals, not parents. The rapid adoption of technology at K-12 schools has become hotly debated, with states attempting to tackle the issue in different ways:

• State legislators in Missouri are pushing to limit screen time at school to 45 minutes per day in kindergarten through fifth grade.
• Virginia passed a new state law to limit social media use in children below age 16 to one hour per day, unless a parent or guardian gives verifiable consent to increase or decrease that limit. The law was halted before it took effect in a legal challenge by the trade association NetChoice. Member organizations of NetChoice include major technology companies such as YouTube, Meta, Reddit, and X Corp. Also in Virginia, a new “Artificial Intelligence Task Force” is studying ethical guardrails for emerging technologies.
• In Florida, a 2024 law went into effect in December 2025 regarding children and social media accounts. The law, which continues to be the subject of extensive litigation, prevents children under age 14 from opening accounts on certain platforms — which could include platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, and YouTube. According to news reports, parents would need to give consent for 14- and 15-year-olds to create and have accounts on the platforms.
• A middle school near Wichita, Kansas, made news in late 2025 when it announced it would require students to turn in their school-issued Chromebooks and would no longer allow the devices to go home.
• Starting in January 2026, a new law in North Carolina began requiring schools to teach students about social media addiction, misinformation, and sex trafficking. The law also prohibits access to social media platforms during the school day, unless directed by a teacher, and bans students from using or possessing a wireless communications device such as a smartphone or smartwatch during the school day.
• Utah passed a state law holding social media companies responsible for the “mental health problems their platforms cause.” Another state law requires social media companies to identify minors who use their platforms and provide tools to their parents to set appropriate boundaries. The state has also sued TikTok and Meta.

Additionally, states are committing resources to studying the impact of technology on children and families outside the classroom:

• The Utah Office of Families is integrating family-policy research into legislative design.
• Attorney General coalitions in more than 40 states have jointly investigated major social-media platforms over youth mental-health harms.

States are also expanding protections beyond the digital sphere. For example, Texas’s Trey’s Law ensures survivors of exploitation cannot be silenced by nondisclosure agreements. As the states have long been considered America’s “laboratories of democracy,” these real-life experiments reveal promising paths forward and important cautionary lessons for crafting effective, rights-respecting policies. See the National Conference of State Legislatures Tracker.

The federal government’s authority to protect children online comes from several specific powers granted by the U.S. Constitution.

Congress can regulate online platforms and digital services because the internet is considered interstate commerce, the buying, selling, and exchange of information across state lines, which falls under the Commerce Clause (Article I, Section 8).

The Necessary and Proper Clause gives Congress additional flexibility to pass laws that support those core powers: even when a specific issue like online child safety is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, Congress can still act if the legislation is reasonably connected to something it is already authorized to regulate.

The federal government plays a foundational role in setting the “rules of the road” for online safety:

• Establishing national standards for privacy, data protection, and child exploitation enforcement.
• Empowering agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice to investigate, enforce, and prosecute violations.
• Coordinates mandatory reporting systems with organizations like National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Forces.
• Balancing competing principles, child protection, free expression, innovation, and privacy, through congressional oversight and judicial review.

But federal authority has real limits. The First Amendment protects free speech, and the Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable government surveillance, meaning any law that touches what people can say or see online, or how their data is collected, must meet a high legal bar. This is why so many child-safety laws, even well-intentioned ones, face immediate court challenges.

The White House released its policy suggestions for a national framework specific to AI in March 2026 in which it presents the challenge of enacting such a framework: “The federal government must … protect American rights, support innovation, and prevent a fragmented patchwork of state regulations that would hinder our national competitiveness, while respecting federalism and State rights.”

There are ongoing policy debates and legal challenges regarding how to draw the line between free speech and protection for children. Consider the discussion surrounding the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA.

• Proponents of KOSA, such as Sen. Richard Blumenthal, say that the legislation would provide young people and parents “with the tools, safeguards, and transparency they need to protect against online harms. The bill requires social media platforms to put the well-being of children first by providing an environment that is safe by default.”
• However, opponents of KOSA, such as the ACLU, say that the initiative would “come at the cost of free speech.”

HISTORY OF FEDERAL INVOLVEMENT IN PROTECTING CHILDREN ONLINE

As the internet became a household tool in the late 1990s, Congress passed several cornerstone laws that continue to define the federal government’s responsibility in protecting children online:

• 1996 – A key legal framework shaping the modern internet is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (1996), which prevents “nascent online platforms from liability for user-generated content.” Some have argued that social media companies, due to their recommendation algorithms, are curating user-generated content in the same way a newspaper curates articles, and thus should be held liable for harmful information found on the platform. This area of case law has yet to be settled.

• 1998 – Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA): Established federal standards for collecting, using, and sharing data from children under 13. Requires verifiable parental consent and is enforced by the FTC.
• 2000 – Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA): Conditioned federal funding for schools and libraries on installing content filters that block obscene or harmful material for minors.
• 2008 – PROTECT Our Children Act: Created the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task forces, which coordinate investigations and prosecutions of online child exploitation across all 50 states.
• 2025 – Take It Down Act: Signed into law in May 2025, this bipartisan measure requires online platforms to remove or block nonconsensual intimate imagery involving minors or adults within 48 hours of a verified report. It builds upon the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s (NCMEC) existing “Take It Down” tool, establishing enforceable obligations for platforms and penalties for noncompliance.

Earlier efforts, such as the COPA in 1998, were struck down as unconstitutional in Ashcroft v. ACLU (2004), establishing that any law restricting access to online content must also respect the First Amendment rights of adults. That precedent continues to guide Congress’s approach to new digital-safety regulations.

COPPA’s bright-line age of 13 has created unintended gaps. Because platforms are reluctant to enforce parental consent requirements, most simply prohibit children under 13 outright, leading to widespread age falsification: research shows 44 percent of children under 13 create accounts by lying about their age, forfeiting the very protections the law intended to provide. More consequentially, that threshold created a de facto “digital age of adulthood” at 13, leaving adolescents to navigate platforms designed for adults with no safeguards tailored to their distinct developmental vulnerabilities.

KEY FEDERAL AGENCIES

At the federal level, protecting children online involves a coordinated but often fragmented ecosystem of agencies and congressional committees.

The Federal Trade Commission enforces children’s privacy rules and investigates manipulative design practices; the Department of Justice prosecutes online exploitation and examines gaps in Section 230; the Federal Communications Commission governs school and library internet access through programs like E-Rate; and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, though not a federal agency, serves as the nation’s clearinghouse for reporting and responding to child exploitation.

In Congress, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, and House Committee on Energy and Commerce shape technology and consumer-protection legislation, while the Judiciary Committees weigh constitutional limits and platform liability.

CLOSING GAPS IN FEDERAL POLICY

Congress is considering several major proposals aimed at improving online safety for children, including updates to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and new accountability standards for platforms under the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). Congress has also considered in multiple sessions stronger civil remedies for victims through the Stop CSAM Act, which stands for Strengthening Transparency and Obligations to Protect Children Suffering from Abuse and Mistreatment Act. Congress has also entertained multiple efforts to reform or sunset Section 230.

Here are some of the gaps that federal lawmakers seek to address:

• No clear federal “duty of care” requiring platforms to prevent harm (KOSA would begin to address this).
• Weak enforcement of COPPA.
• In 2025, the Internet Watch Foundation identified 8,029 AI-generated images and videos of realistic child sexual abuse, a 14 percent increase in criminal AI content over the previous year. This presents unresolved questions about whether Section 230 shields platforms, creating serious legal ambiguity.
• No federal age-verification standard; states are creating their own patchwork of rules.
• Digital literacy and resilience efforts are severely underfunded relative to the scale of the problem.

As Congress weighs federal child protection legislation, a newer dimension has entered the debate. As R Street Institute’s Adam Thierer and First Amendment scholar Greg Lukianoff recently argued, how the United States regulates AI and online platforms has direct consequences for its competitive position against China. Overbroad or poorly crafted laws can pressure American developers to build more restricted systems, quietly eroding the innovation ecosystem that underpins U.S. technological leadership. Getting child protection laws right, which means targeted, constitutionally sound, and precisely drafted, is not just a legal imperative. It is a strategic one.

WHAT STANDS IN THE WAY OF FEDERAL REFORM? AN OVERVIEW OF KEY BARRIERS

Numerous entrenched structural, legal, and political dynamics help explain why federal action on child safety has stalled, even as the risks to children accelerate.

1. A Powerful Advocacy Ecosystem Shaping the Debate

Large technology companies invest heavily in shaping federal policy. In the first nine months of 2024, the industry spent more than $51 million on federal lobbying, a 14 percent increase over the previous year, with a significant portion aimed at slowing or narrowing child-safety proposals such as KOSA. Meta alone deployed 66 lobbyists and spent a record $18.9 million during that period.

These companies also support trade associations and legal coalitions, such as NetChoice, which have successfully challenged multiple state child-safety laws on First Amendment grounds. In addition, a broader network of think tanks and advocacy organizations, such as the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, contribute to public debate, often raising concerns that new proposals could chill lawful speech or undermine online communities. This creates a challenging environment for lawmakers seeking consensus.

2. Legitimate Constitutional Questions About Scope and Overreach

Federal policymakers must balance two responsibilities: safeguarding children and upholding First Amendment protections. Courts have historically placed strict limits on content-based regulations. For example, the Supreme Court struck down the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) in 2004 for being overly broad.

In 2024, House Speaker Mike Johnson cited these concerns when declining to bring KOSA to a vote. At the same time, many legal scholars and child-safety experts note that content-neutral regulations, such as standards for design features, data minimization, age verification, and a “duty of care,” are more likely to withstand constitutional scrutiny because they target platform conduct rather than user expression. This emerging area of agreement could provide a productive path forward.

The Great Challenge of Trade-Offs

Efforts to protect children online often involve balancing competing values:

• Liberty v. Protection: Policies that restrict access to content or platforms may enhance safety but limit individual freedom, particularly for adults.
• Privacy v. Verification: Stronger age verification and monitoring tools can help prevent harm, but may require users to share more personal information, raising concerns about data security and anonymity.
• Parental responsibility v. Platform responsibility: Questions remain about who should bear the primary responsibility for children’s online experiences: families, tech companies, or the government. Expanding platform liability may shift responsibility away from parents, while minimal regulation may place more burden on families.
• Innovation v. Safeguards: Rapid innovation, particularly in AI, offers education and economic opportunities for some, but can outpace the development of safety standards and ethical guidelines.

These trade-offs highlight that there is no single solution. Policy approaches often reflect differing views about the appropriate role of government, the market, and families.

LAW ENFORCEMENT: CONNECTING THE FRONTLINES

The Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force Program (ICAC) exemplifies the coordination required to protect children online. Established in 1998 and funded through the U.S. Department of Justice, ICAC is a national network of 61 coordinated task forces representing over 5,400 federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies.

Together, ICAC:

• Investigates cases involving online enticement, child sexual abuse material (CSAM), sextortion, and trafficking.
• Conducts undercover operations on platforms where predators groom minors.
• Provides digital forensics support and training to local police and prosecutors.
• Partners with organizations like the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) to track reports from the CyberTipline, which received more than 36 million reports in 2023.

Local ICAC units work directly with schools, parents, and civic organizations to conduct outreach and training, bridging the gap between law enforcement and communities.

This partnership-based approach demonstrates how law enforcement at every level must now operate not just on the street but also in the digital neighborhood, where predators, exploiters, and traffickers increasingly target youth.

Protecting children today requires layered cooperation to form a continuum of care and accountability:

• States craft standards, test laws, and set education policy.
• Communities and schools model balanced technology use.
• Citizen boards bring real-world insight into policymaking.
• Law enforcement delivers training, deterrence, and justice.

TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES: INNOVATING WITH SAFETY BY DESIGN

Technology companies are increasingly demonstrating that child safety can be built directly into products through industry-led “safety by design” approaches. Rather than relying solely on regulation, this model embeds age-appropriate defaults, parental visibility, privacy-preserving verification, and data-minimization practices into platform architecture.

Examples include Uber’s Teen Accounts, which provide verified teen access with built-in parental oversight and ride safeguards, as well as emerging tools like privacy-preserving age estimation, consent-based identity services, transparent content labeling, and real-time monitoring of malicious activity. Similarly, Meta released its Teen Accounts on Instagram.

Platforms such as Freespoke.com demonstrate how search and discovery tools can filter explicit content while respecting user privacy and free-speech principles.

AI-powered content detection systems are achieving unprecedented scale: Thorn and NCMEC’s partnership with tech firms have enabled automated identification and takedown of child exploitation material that would be impossible for human reviewers alone​.

Controversial digital ID wallets and parental consent APIs can allow platforms to implement protective features (such as blocking child sexual abuse material, restricting certain content to minors, and implementing nighttime use restrictions) without requiring government surveillance or data collection​. Still, safety systems are largely designed and monitored by the platform itself, raising questions about incentives and oversight. When paired with digital literacy, parental supervision, and shared industry standards, safety-by-design innovations can reduce harm while preserving innovation and user autonomy.

Industry transparency and accountability mechanisms are improving: Companies are voluntarily issuing annual public reports on child safety risks and mitigation measures. Independent audits of platforms can reveal gaps in safety practices, but their independence varies, especially when platforms select auditors or control access to data and findings.

THE GLOBAL LANDSCAPE: A BORDERLESS CHALLENGE

Countries around the world are taking different approaches to protecting children online, from the United Kingdom’s new duty-of-care model to the European Union’s Digital Services Act around digital-ID wallets and age-verification apps, and Australia’s nationwide age restrictions.

These experiments reflect a shared reality: online exploitation, trafficking, and harmful content flow across borders faster than national laws can respond. Global institutions, including WeProtect, INTERPOL, and UN agencies, are working to coordinate standards and improve cross-border enforcement, signaling that protecting children online is now a global challenge, not just a national one.

Not every approach, however, has produced the results its architects intended. The European Union’s sweeping regulatory framework, while well-intentioned, offers a cautionary tale about what happens when compliance burdens outpace the capacity of smaller companies to meet them. Startups and independent developers across Europe have found themselves navigating overlapping requirements that large platforms can absorb but that smaller innovators cannot, slowing the development of the very tools that could make children safer. As the R Street Institute and others have documented, heavy-handed regulation does not just constrain bad actors. It can quietly crowd out the innovative companies most likely to build the next generation of safety solutions.

China presents a different and more troubling contrast. The Chinese government has enacted some of the world’s most restrictive rules on minors’ screen time and platform access, including hard limits on how long children can use certain apps each day. On the surface, these look like child protection measures. In practice, they exist within a system that has no meaningful privacy protections, no independent judiciary to check government overreach, and no separation between child-safety policy and state surveillance. The absence of those constraints does make certain things easier: age verification, identity tracking, and behavioral monitoring can be implemented at a scale and speed that democratic societies would rightly find alarming. But the cost is borne by every citizen, child and adult alike, who lives under a digital infrastructure built for control, not protection.

The lesson for American policymakers is not to choose between Europe’s over-regulation and China’s surveillance state, but to chart a more precise path: clear expectations, targeted obligations, and room for the innovation that makes genuine safety possible.

HOW DO WE MEASURE SUCCESS?

Families and communities will inevitably have different expectations for success regarding the importance of limiting screentime and AI use, and who is ultimately responsible for those decisions. Some families will choose to limit screen time at home and delay social media and phone use. Other families will choose no boundaries at all. Similarly, there is a rising trend toward screen-free schools, while also the proliferation of AI-based schools such as Alpha School.

Despite these differences, measurable indicators of success in protecting children online can include:

• Reduction in child exploitation: A clear decline in the creation, distribution, and consumption of CSAM, and improved identification and rescue of victims.

• Increased disruption in exploitation networks: More effective detection, reporting and prosecution of those engaged in online exploitation.

• Adoption of parental tools: Wider availability and use of clear, accessible parental controls that allow families to set boundaries aligned with their values.

• Platform accountability and transparency: Increased reporting and truly independent vetting of tech companies on safety measures, enforcement actions, and outcomes.

• Digital literacy and resilience: Improved ability among children and teens to navigate online environments safely, recognize risks, and seek help when needed.

Ultimately, success is not defined by eliminating technology from children’s lives, but by reducing harm while preserving opportunity, autonomy, and innovation.

Laws can’t keep pace with the speed of technology, and that’s where civil society steps in. Across the country, parents, educators, nonprofits, and innovators are filling the gaps between policy and practice. These organizations bring heart, expertise, and practical tools to help families navigate an online world that’s growing more complex every day.

The movement to protect children online and offline now spans an entire ecosystem:

• Parents: A 2025 Harris Poll found that most children would prefer to spend more time outdoors with friends than online, suggesting that heavy online use may be more of a habit than a preference. Gallup notes that active parental involvement, such as setting limits and discussing online content, can help reduce harm. Parents also should model digital intentionality, demonstrating to children what healthy use of devices looks like.
• Advocacy groups such as the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) and Enough Is Enough raise awareness of the harms caused by the unregulated online sex industry, online grooming, and exploitative design features that prey on children’s attention. An essential dimension of advocacy is ensuring that survivors of exploitation have the legal right to seek justice. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) allows victims to bring civil suits against traffickers and those who knowingly benefit from trafficking ventures. At the state level, more than 20 states now permit survivors to sue facilitators, including hotels, advertisers, and online platforms, that profit from exploitation.
• Educational organizations like Common Sense Media, iCivics, and Protect Young Eyes, Everstrong  equip families and teachers to talk openly about digital behavior, privacy, and online relationships.
• Philanthropic initiatives, such as the Phillips Foundation’s Safe Childhood Symposium and the Child Safeguarding Lab, an incubator focused on scaling promising, early-stage innovations and interventions to prevent institutional child sexual abuse in the U.S. The Institute for Families & Technology is catalyzing the movement to prioritize children’s safety, health, development, and overall well-being in the design and use of digital technology.

This video is meant to help youth recognize warning signs of unhealthy or exploitative behaviors, often the starting point for online enticement, sextortion, or child sex trafficking (2 minutes):

IT COMES DOWN TO US

Protecting children on and offline is not only a policy challenge. It is a cultural, civic, and generational one. Laws and technologies can create guardrails, but lasting safety begins with how families, educators, innovators, and citizens choose to live and lead in a digital world.

• Prevent Exposure: By limiting access to harmful content, addictive technologies, and bad actors who exploit the vulnerable. This includes privacy-preserving age verification, content filters, and design safeguards that reduce exposure to manipulative algorithms and explicit material.
• Equip and Empower: Children, families, and educators with the tools, literacy, and confidence to navigate the digital world wisely. Families should have meaningful control over what their children access, and young people should be empowered to recognize, avoid, and report predatory behavior. Equipping also means restoring real-world childhood: as Jonathan Haidt and Lenore Skenazy emphasize, unstructured outdoor play is essential for healthy development in ways screens can never replace.
• Enforce Accountability: Ensuring that technology companies design with children’s safety and dignity in mind. While it can be difficult to regulate intentionality, companies will respond to external pressures from lawmakers, parents, and their users. It’s important for parents and policy makers to form a chorus of expectations, to help create market forces and expectations for technology companies. What does that look like for industry? It means transparency around algorithms, responsibility for removing harmful or false content, and product choices that protect minors without compromising free expression or privacy.

Ultimately, every law, platform, and innovation reflects the culture that shaped it.

The question for every reader, and every community, is this: Which of the Four E’s will you move the needle on to build a digital world worthy of the next generation?

Whether you are a parent, educator, or civic leader, use this Policy Circle Brief to spark dialogue and identify practical steps that make children safer and more resilient, both online and off.

INFORM

Online safety begins with awareness. Most children say they would rather spend time outdoors with friends than on their phones, yet many spend nearly five hours a day online. Use this Brief to:

• Read your state’s current laws on child online safety, privacy, and “Reasonable Childhood Independence.” Start with the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) tracker and LetGrow for state-by-state overviews.
• Attend a school board meeting to learn about your school’s cell phone, internet use, and digital policies.
• Stay informed about the evolving policy conversation by following organizations whose policy areas include children’s safety and tech policy, like the NCOSE, Brookings, AEI, R Street, and Cato, which regularly publish analyses of how technology, privacy law, and child safety intersect.

EQUIP

• Contact your state legislator about measures they are exploring or supporting to protect children online.
  • Support legislative models that promote both appropriate childhood independence and safety. The Let Grow Legislative Toolkit offers practical guidance for adapting Reasonable Childhood Independence laws in your state.
  • Phone-Free Schools State Report Card provides data and model policy frameworks to help lawmakers and communities evaluate and strengthen approaches to device use in schools, reflecting a growing nationwide effort to balance student well-being, focus, and safety.
• Ask your school about digital policies
  • Ask local leaders, such as school board members, police departments, and community centers, what is already being done to educate families about online risks. Offer to help expand or publicize these initiatives. For example, some districts are adopting AI-use guidelines for educators, while others are implementing stricter limits on student device use during the school day—illustrating how local communities are experimenting with different approaches.
  • Partner with your school or community group to adopt proven models for unstructured outdoor play. Resources like Let Grow Play Clubs make it simple to start a neighborhood program that promotes real-world connection, resilience, and healthy independence.
• Host a Policy Circle
  • Host a Policy Circle using this Brief. Conversations that begin locally can spark collaboration among neighbors, schools, civic groups, and state legislators. Learn how to start your own Circle and connect with us in our Community.
  • Host a discussion with parents, educators, or faith communities about the balance between freedom and protection in digital life. You can host a roundtable using this Policy Circle Brief.

CONNECT

You do not need to work in government or technology to make an impact. By uniting families, schools, and civic groups, you can build a safer, more connected environment for children. Many of the most meaningful steps to protect children happen in local communities, through schools, parent groups, and civic partnerships. Whether you coordinate a Let Grow Play Club at your child’s school, start a digital safety workshop at your place of worship, or encourage your state to modernize its youth privacy laws, your leadership can help protect children and restore balance and a safe, real-world childhood. You can:

• Partner with local nonprofits
  • Start or join a local parent group such as Wait Until Eight.
  • The Alliance for Secure AI is working to improve AI safety guardrails and transparency to ensure that stories like the ones mentioned in this Brief do not repeat themselves.
  • Collaborate with faith-based organizations to create mentorship, service, or play programs where teens can connect face-to-face, serve others, and strengthen community ties. Some churches and synagogues have launched “Tech-Free” Sundays or Saturdays or volunteer events where families leave devices behind and serve together.
  • Encourage local businesses and nonprofits to sponsor or host community “digital literacy days,” pairing tech professionals with parents and youth to discuss online privacy and ethical technology use.
  • Join or support organizations advancing balanced, privacy-respecting safety measures such as The Media Trust, which tracks online risks; the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which provides family education resources; or Funders for a Safe Childhood, which strengthens prevention and recovery efforts.
• Support digital literacy efforts
  • Share credible tools such as Common Sense Media’s digital literacy curriculum, Everstrong’s Prevention Portal, or iCivic’s lessons on digital citizenship. AEI also published a Protecting Youth Online guide. These free, research-based programs help children understand privacy, respect, and responsibility online.
  • Invite local law enforcement, counselors, or technology teachers to share insights and answer questions about the effects of constant connection and how phone-free learning environments improve focus and well-being. With more than 30 states now adopting policies that limit or ban cellphones in classrooms, parents and educators can collaborate on school-level policies that set healthy digital boundaries and create time for genuine interaction.
    • Take a look at this sample policy published by NEA.
• Create device-free community spaces
  • Some parents are now providing teens with a “starter phone,” a basic or flip phone without social media or internet apps, to help them build independence without the pressure of constant connectivity. Models such as the Gabb Phone 3 Pro or the Light Phone II support calls, texts, GPS, and safety tools, but block social media apps and explicit content. These devices give children the freedom to communicate while encouraging the focus, calm, and confidence that come from being unplugged.

1. Parent and Family Guidance Tools

• American Enterprise Institute’s Protecting Youth Online: A Guide to Parental Controls and Safety Tools: A practical guide summarizing tools available to help parents manage children’s online experiences. This resource highlights how platform-based safety features and parental controls can complement, not replace, family conversations and community education about responsible technology use.
• Highlights Magazine + Google “Be Internet Awesome” Program: This special edition magazine, internet games, and kit designed for family or classroom use helps explain to children as young as 6 years old how to navigate the internet safely and what dangers may be lurking on seemingly harmless websites. The kit, designed in cooperation with Google, explains the concepts of clickbait and spam, discerning between what’s real and fake, when to flag an adult, and more.
• Parent Guidance Expert Erica Komisar: “Social Media Isn’t Going Away, But Parents Can Equip Children to Resist the Harms,” essay published by the Institute for Family Studies.
• Competitive Enterprise Institute: CEI Director of the Center for Technology and Innovation Jessica Melugin has created a directory of online safety tools for parents.
• The Anxious Generation author Jonathan Haidt has created a list of resources for parents.

2. Research Institutions and Policy Analysis

Organizations offering evidence-based insights on child development, digital safety, and the policy trade-offs facing lawmakers:

• Brookings Register’s Protecting Children from Online Harms: A concise, community-focused editorial highlighting how parents, schools, and civic organizations can work together to create safer online environments. The piece emphasizes practical cooperation over regulation, reinforcing the importance of family and local initiative in addressing youth digital risks.
• AEI + Brookings Institute’s Rebalancing: Children First: An essay urging policymakers and civic leaders to place children’s well-being at the center of technology and education policy. It calls for rebalancing priorities so that innovation serves developmental and human needs rather than the reverse.
• Children First’s Why Family Structure and Stability Matter for Children: Examines the relationship between family stability, child well-being, and long-term outcomes and shows that digital safety is most effective when reinforced by strong family structures, parental engagement, and secure home environments.
• R Street Institute’s Protecting Children’s Online Safety Does Not Require Less Data Security: Argues that policymakers can protect minors online without weakening data privacy or increasing surveillance. This commentary explains how well-designed privacy laws and encryption standards can enhance both child safety and user security.
• Cato Institute’s Would New Legislation Actually Make Kids Safer Online?: Analyzes how proposed child-protection bills could unintentionally restrict lawful speech or expand government control over content moderation. This paper offers a constitutional perspective on balancing child safety, free expression, and privacy.
• What Would Online Age Verification Mean for Free Speech, Privacy, and Youth Online Safety?: A 2024 webinar moderated by Jennifer Huddleston exploring how age-verification mandates intersect with privacy, speech, and safety in the digital environment.

3. Advocacy and Public Awareness Organizations

Nonprofits working to prevent exploitation, raise awareness, and strengthen community engagement.

• Enough Is Enough National Internet Safety Initiative: A nonprofit advocating for safe digital environments for children through education, public awareness campaigns, and legislative engagement on issues such as pornography exposure and online exploitation.
• National Center on Sexual Exploitation: Researches and advocates against the sexual exploitation of children, with current initiatives focused on AI-generated imagery and on advancing policies that strengthen online protections for minors.