Pornography is the most corrosive epidemic of the modern age and that’s in large part due to how easy it is to access via social media. A study out of London from Middlesex University that comprised kids ages 11 to 16 discovered that 28% of respondents were first exposed to porn by accident. Another 19% were unexpectedly shown it by someone else. While porn is not healthy for anyone, it is particularly harmful to young people whose brains are not fully developed. That same study revealed that because kids are unable to process explicit content in the same way as adults, exposure to it at a young age creates unhealthy neural pathways and sets them up to be lifelong addicts. To stop the societal rot that is the porn industry and to help protect the vulnerable kids who are victims of it, something must be done about just how easy it is to access adult content online.
The latest attempt to do that is the App Store Accountability Act. The bill seeks to implement an age verification system on all app stores, such as the Apple App Store and Google Play, to name a few. This would protect kids from accessing corrosive material from not just the typical big-name social media culprits but also the smaller apps that are not on anyone’s radar, that profit heavily from getting adult content in front of kids and can be downloaded from app stores.
Perhaps more important than the age verification piece, in terms of enforcement, the bill would grant a private right of action for parents and guardians, allowing them to sue app stores if their children are exposed to pornographic content or extreme violence through them. If these app stores no longer have liability protection, they will be incentivized to enforce age verification and parental controls to ensure that kids are not able to access harmful online material. As Sen. Lee said in his statement on the bill’s introduction, “If we want to stop this vicious trend, we can’t rely on big corporations to be “moral.” We need them to know they’ll go bankrupt if they victimize kids.”