Amidst growing concerns for the internet’s underregulation of unsolicited explicit content, the U.K., accompanied by adjacent legislation from the U.S., Australia and a multitude of European countries, has begun limiting access to online content. The U.K.’s Online Safety Act (OSA) subjects numerous websites, including Spotify, YouTube, Reddit, X, Wikipedia and other social media platforms, to the adoption of and adherence to policies restricting site visitation and content consumption. The OSA and OSA-adjacent laws aim to eliminate not only youths’ exposure to sexual, violent and abusive content, but also the general consumption of bigoted and illegal content.
“The problem is that a lot of people don’t think [the OSA] is going to solve the online safety problem. Now they feel their rights are being violated in that they’re having to provide proof for something that they don’t feel like they should have to. You’re approaching a very slippery slope there, I think, in allowing a government to decide what is and what is not [explicit],” government teacher Samuel Fraundorf said.
The OSA requires that all online services ensure that formal age verification prevents younger audiences from accessing age-inappropriate content. The act demands that these websites clearly specify their protective precautions in their terms of service. Media of the aforementioned age verification include providing government-issued identification, credit card information or even facial scan identification. Innumerable citizens affected by the legislation feel that these regulatory policies put their privacy at risk for insignificant content consumption.
The OSA classifies all content-recommending websites that either attract mass visitation — a monthly sum of UK visitors greater than 34 million —or host an interuser content sharing system as a “Category 1 service.” The OSA requires Category 1 services too, in addition to implementing age-restrictive procedures and providing adult users with easily accessible, algorithm-manipulative tools, allowing them to control the amount of controversial and potentially hateful content on their feed.
“The Online Safety Act might sound good on paper, but it really isn’t because, sure, it’s supposed to protect people from harmful content, but I think it gives the government way too much control over what can and can’t be posted and consumed online. There are also some safety concerns because you have to give your identification to some websites. [The identification process] is very difficult to do,” magnet junior Daniel O’Connell said.
Without a doubt, the OSA creates an inconvenience when accessing content on the internet. However, politicians believe that protecting the susceptible minds of the younger generations from unregulated content justifies the act. Governments across the world have begun following the U.K.’s policies, with Australia approving an under-16 social media ban and Denmark, Greece, Spain, Italy and France testing age verification technology. Numerous U.S. states also expressed their favor for age verification on social media, app stores and websites containing adult content.
As for NC, the Cobb County School District (CCSD) already has restricted expansive content for students, ranging from books to digital scholarly works. The likelihood of the U.S. creating policies that restrict content to the same degree as the OSA remains unclear; however, it holds serious implications. Increasingly, state and local governments could pass legislation similar to the OSA in alignment with their political and cultural values, a phenomenon exemplified in school book bans. Digital activities in the classroom could slowly fade from NC curricula, and research-based classes’ rigor could increase greatly.
