Imagine a high-pitched scream declaring that children are being deprived of their rights.
Well, what rights are they being deprived of, you would ask yourself. Their right to a loving home? Their right to food? Their right to an education?
The scream returns. It’s their right to social media!
OPINION: BIG TECH’S STICKY WEB HAS TRAPPED CHILDREN, ADDICTING AND EXPLOITING THEM
If you’re a parent, you would rightfully respond: they don’t have a right to social media.
But the reality is that Big Tech and its apologists believe children should have a right to access social media and all digital platforms, regardless of the content. So does the commercial sex industry. If they didn’t believe this, they wouldn’t oppose efforts to protect children online. But they do at every step.
Look no further than Big Tech’s lobbying machine that spent $71 million in 2025 opposing common-sense protections. Look no further than when any U.S. state attempts to pass legislation to regulate youth access to social media or to protect children from accessing pornography online, you’ll see immediate legal challenges from the Free Speech Coalition and NetChoice, both industry lobby groups. Look no further than hit pieces to discredit hard-working advocates in the child protection space.
If you dig a little deeper, what these industries ultimately want is to remain unregulated. When industries such as Big Tech and Big Porn profit from maximum engagement online, naturally, they don’t want the burden of accountability.
But in their lobbying efforts, lawsuits, and news columns, Big Tech and its apologists are being deceitful about online child safety to the detriment of children. What they carefully leave out is the fact that social media has harmed children.
The reality is that families have suffered unimaginable grief after finding their children had died by suicide because they fell victim to online sexual extortion. Children have died because of viral online challenges. Children have died because of fentanyl-laced drugs they bought off social media. Children have become addicted to social media, they’ve been targeted by predators, and they’ve been sex trafficked.
Numerous studies and law enforcement data show serious risks for children, especially around sexual exploitation and coercion. Over 20.5 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation were received by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children CyberTipline in 2024. The FBI has warned that financial extortion is a rapidly growing crime targeting young boys between the ages of 14 and 17.
Artificial intelligence can generate synthetic child sexual abuse material at alarming rates. Internet Watch Foundation data reported 1,286 AI-generated videos containing child sexual abuse material for the first half of 2025 — a 400% increase from 2024; over 78% of these were classified as the most severe abuse category. The Bark parental control app revealed that in 2025, the top apps flagged for grooming were: 1. Snapchat, 2. Instagram, 3. Discord, 4. GroupMe, 5. Reddit.
These alarming trends demand accountability from the online platforms and tube sites that enable the sexual exploitation and abuse of children.
While advocates can debate which solutions are best needed to protect children, we are seeing political will from countries including Australia, Indonesia, and Germany to change and confront youth access to social media. The U.K.’s Online Safety Act enforces age verification for adults to access pornography.
In the United States, the powerful Senate version of the Kids Online Safety Act has an astonishing 75 co-sponsors and benefits children through a legally actionable “Duty of Care” to ensure that social media and tech platforms prioritize children’s safety. Age verification laws protecting children from pornography have been passed in half of the U.S. states, and the Supreme Court ruled that these laws are constitutional.
Anti-exploitation advocates have pursued legal avenues on behalf of survivors of online sexual abuse and exploitation. In California, a jury is deliberating in a case in which the plaintiff alleges that platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok are intentionally designed to hook users, specifically teenagers and children. At the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, we have gone toe-to-toe with Pornhub, XHamster, XVideos, and X in our legal work to seek justice for survivors of sexual exploitation.
There’s growing momentum to repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, aka Big Tech’s liability shield, which has single-handedly prevented survivors from receiving justice for online harms. Section 230 was on the National Center on Sexual Exploitation’s Dirty Dozen List in 2025.
SOCIAL MEDIA ADDICTION GETS CHILDREN ‘HOOKED’ ON ‘DOPAMINE CYCLE EARLY’: TIANA LOWE DOESCHER
Big Tech and Big Porn both want an unregulated internet where children can have unfettered access to everything. Never mind that the current unregulated internet allows children access to predators who entice and groom them, to algorithms that push eating disorders, drugs, and viral challenges, to pornography that features child sexual abuse material, sex trafficking, rape, violent, and racist content.
Thank goodness that the world is waking up to the harmful consequences of social media on children, but there will be grave consequences for future generations if Big Tech and Big Porn apologists get what they desire.
Dr. Marcel van der Watt is the president and CEO of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, the leading national nonprofit organization exposing the links between all forms of sexual exploitation, such as child sexual abuse, prostitution, sex trafficking, and the public health harms of pornography. On X: @NCOSE.