Parents cannot effectively remove technology from their children day to day, so we must target the source of the danger itself. //

In the digital age, shielding our children from the pervasive threat of explicit online content has become an urgent concern demanding innovative and effective solutions. //

The singular dependency on individual filters stems from Supreme Court rulings in the late ’90s and early 2000s that ultimately determined that the internet was not so pervasive as TV and radio and therefore not subject to the same regulations. Adults’ rights to pornography outweighed the need to implement protections because the burden of government involvement was too restrictive and a disproportionate response to the problem at hand. The idea was that parents should simply protect their kids on their own dime rather than potentially threaten First Amendment rights.

Here’s the thing: First Amendment rights have never applied to obscenity. And while we might forgive the court for not predicting the future of broadband internet, the fact is it is now much more pervasive than TV and radio. The safety of our children demands action. //

The SCREEN Act, with its requirement for robust age-verification technologies, reflects a pragmatic and narrowly tailored solution to a complex problem. //

The only thing this bill does is ensure that pornography platforms perform the same age-verification checks that are already done by alcohol, tobacco, and gambling websites. This should be a slam dunk.