A baseline set of data privacy protections for all users from federal legislation should include age-appropriate protections for online privacy. Platforms and other interactive digital service providers should be required to prioritize the safety and well-being of young people above profit and revenue in their product design. This entails designing technology that suits a child’s developmental stage, prohibiting online platforms from collecting personal data from kids and teens, banning targeted advertising to young people, and implementing measures to protect children’s mental health and safety and keep children safe from those who would use online platforms to harm, harass, and exploit them. Additionally, it includes requiring data transparency to facilitate independent research aimed at understanding and mitigating online risks faced by youth users.

✔ Advance industry action to implement age-appropriate health, safety, and privacy best practices on online platforms.
Most existing industry efforts to promote youth online safety are voluntary and have yet to yield clear results. In addition to pursuing legislation as discussed above, policymakers should engage industry to build on existing voluntary principles^{352 353 354} to reach additional voluntary commitments to implement specific design interventions— informed by the recommended practices for industry in this report—to protect youth health, safety, and privacy on their platforms. These commitments should come from a broad set of industry players who shape kids’ online experiences, including platforms, mobile app stores, mobile app developers, self-regulatory organizations (including those that provide ratings and other information), website operators, and others. These commitments should also include agreements to provide regular public reporting on the status of their efforts and to enable transparency through independent research and evaluation of the efficacy of these interventions on their platforms.

Complementing federal legislation that establishes health, safety, and privacy protections, areas where policymakers could bolster industry accountability by securing voluntary commitments include areas discussed in the industry recommended practices in the Task Force report, such as:

• Limiting platform design and features that materially increase engagement online or decrease online safety.
• Developing reliable, effective, privacy-preserving age assurance technology, including understanding the potential role of device-level age assurance and opportunities for simple yet meaningful parental consent.
• Improving consistency of mobile app ratings across app stores, including age ranges, features, and privacy settings of apps.
• Banning targeted advertising to children’s accounts and collection of geolocation, biometric, and other personal data.
• Agreeing to common terminology for privacy and safety features, tools, and settings across services to ease the burden on parents.
• Developing consistent approaches to transparency reporting and measurement of online platforms.

✔ Work to require access to platform data for independent researchers in privacy- preserving ways.
Improving young people’s online experiences requires more research into the effects of online platforms and other digital technologies, and the efficacy of interventions, on youth mental health and safety. Federal policymakers should identify the legal, practical, and resource barriers to independent research on online platforms and take action—including through legislation and voluntary industry commitments—to address these barriers. Congress should enact legislation to require platforms to provide vetted independent researchers with tiered access to data in privacy-preserving ways. Federal policymakers should develop guidelines for independent researchers accessing and processing data subjects’ human rights, and research ethics, and offers context-specific guidance on methods for studying youth online. Policymakers should also continue to collaborate with international partners in developing mechanisms for enabling researchers to access platform data in ways that are equitable and protect users’ privacy.

✔ Provide support for research into youth health, safety, and privacy online.
Policymakers should support research on youth online health, safety, and privacy. This support should prioritize research that incentivizes community-research collaborations that focus on emergent technology, translating the relationship between offline and online vulnerability, and effective interventions. There should be a particular focus on the impact of technology on child and adolescent development. Federal agencies that fund research should coordinate research priorities. This should complement support for prevention and education/curriculum development efforts.

✔ Promote youth voices in solution setting.
Young people are active participants in their own online safety and have crucial insights into their own experiences and those of their peers. Their voices should be incorporated into policymaking discussions at every level to provide feedback and input to federal policymakers. Federal agencies should conduct self-assessments of how they are currently incorporating youth voices into policymaking and, as needed, develop and share processes and practices to better engage youth.

✔ Support access to and implementation of new and updated resources tailored for youth, parents, health providers, and educators.
Using the best practices for parents and caregivers developed by the Task Force as a starting point, policymakers should support schools, public libraries, health providers, and other institutions in developing and implementing resources that focus on best practices for protecting children’s online health, safety, and privacy; promoting benefits of using online platforms; building healthy digital habits; supporting the development of digital citizenship and media literacy skills; and mitigating the risk of harm. The Task Force supports dissemination and implementation of the 5 C’s Framework, outlined in the Best Practices for Parents and Caregivers section of this report, as well as incorporating tips for parents and young people for online safety, mental health, and well-being from the Surgeon General’s Advisory on Social Media and Youth Mental Health. The Task Force also recommends the educational materials and resources developed by DHS through the Know2Protect campaign, which offers tools and information to:

1. empower young people, parents, and trusted adults on ways to prevent and combat exploitation and abuse both on and offline,
2. explain how to report incidents of these crimes, and
3. offer support resources for victims and survivors of online child sexual exploitation and abuse.

✔ Engage in international efforts to collaborate on online safety.
The United States works bilaterally and multilaterally with its international government partners on online safety and security efforts. There also continues to be a growing international community of digital safety regulators, as governments around the world grapple with the need to promote young people’s well-being online. The United States should join the Global Online Safety Regulators Network as an official observer or exchange best and promising practices on protecting youth privacy and safety online and continue to engage in these discussions and promote the development of effective and rights-respecting common approaches worldwide.

Next: Conclusion