WHEN the House Committee on Welfare of Children approved the substitute bill for the Children’s Social Media and Online Gaming Safety Act on Sept. 7, one question stayed open: Should a parent have the final say on whether a 13-year-old can use social media?
Rep. Roman Romulo, who headed the technical working group, said the group left parental consent to the plenary so all members could be heard. The full House takes up the question next. But the committee-approved version already says access for users aged 13 to 17 “shall be subject to parental consent.”
In my first “Let’s Talk #Social” column, I wrote about drafting the 10 Golden Rules on Internet Safety for World Kids Network and moderating its children’s chat rooms as “Robotica.” There were no hard-and-fast rules. We worked it out at home, one rule at a time.
One thing was clear, though: I am a parent first. I would never have let my daughters wander off alone into a place I hadn’t checked first. Being responsible for my child did not stop when she went online. The apps our children use today are harder for a parent to watch than a moderated chat room.
Children below 13 could not create or use accounts under the measure, which substitutes more than 40 House bills, including House Bill 10574. Romulo said the aim is to keep under-13s off screens. Users aged 13 to 17 lose livestreaming, endless scrolling, short-form video feeds, recommendations and “communications and interactions.” He told OneNews on Aug. 26 that 13- to 17-year-olds are adolescents who can use them with guidance from parents, guardians and schools. He said chat features in games expose children to extremist groups.
Lawmakers left “endless scrolling” and “short-form video feeds” undefined. A new office under the Department of Information and Communications Technology will write the rules, but the law takes effect whether or not they have been issued, so a parent giving consent may not know what a child will lose.
Parents and parent substitutes carry “the primary responsibility to promote the safe, responsible, and age-appropriate use of social media and online games.” The government may offer them parenting programs, and no parent faces a penalty solely because a child used a prohibited feature.
Rep. Jude Acidre said parents will always have a role in guiding children online, but “families should not be expected to carry this responsibility by themselves.”
Safety measures, the bill says, “shall not be made dependent upon parental consent, parental supervision,” or on a child or parent switching them on. Platforms cannot escape liability because a child misstated her age or failed to turn on a safety setting. A checkbox, a typed birthdate or the child’s login is not by itself proof that a parent agreed.
The Child Rights Network (CRN) welcomed the House version for moving away from a blanket ban toward safety by design and by default. It objected to two provisions: the ban on short-form videos and a consent requirement covering every child.
CRN said households are not all alike, and assuming every child has a reachable, non-abusive parent is dangerous. A consent rule, it said, could keep some children from emergency help during abuse or trafficking.
In Australia, where the law bars under-16s, a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper found that 22 percent of teens using banned platforms had help from a parent, older sibling or other adult to open a new account after theirs was shut.
A 13-year-old and a 17-year-old face the same consent rule and the same feature ban. At a Senate hearing in February, University of the Philippines President Angelo Jimenez said a 12-year-old and a 16-year-old are very different, and called for rules calibrated to age. In May, he proposed safeguards that change with a child’s age.
In early 2021, Interpol, Unicef and the child-protection network Ecpat surveyed 950 children aged 12 to 17 for “Disrupting Harm in the Philippines,” and one caregiver for each child. The study was about online sexual exploitation and abuse, but also asked caregivers what they could do online.
Twenty-six percent of caregivers had never used the internet, rising to 49 percent of those 50 and older. The report says grandparents often help raise Filipino children. Only 23 percent of caregivers aged 50 and above knew how to report harmful content on social media, compared with 71 percent of those 29 and younger. Those caregivers need training.
So should a parent have the final say? The bill asks parents for guidance and a verified yes. As written, a parent’s no ends the matter. A parent’s yes opens an account with many features switched off, and no parent can sign up a 12-year-old. Only biological and adoptive parents qualify as “parents,” so a grandmother raising a grandchild needs a certification from the Department of Social Welfare and Development before her yes counts. I would let parents decide. A parent’s yes should not let a platform off the hook. If a grandmother or an aunt is already raising the child, the certification should come faster.
