I am calling on all parents nationwide in the United States to unite in support of our right to supervise our children’s online activity and safety until they reach legal adulthood at the age of 18. Currently, it is the policy of all three of the major internet tech companies, Apple, Google, and Microsoft, to restrict or remove parental supervision and monitoring on their children’s devices once they turn 13 years old. This includes the children being able to turn off monitoring of online activity, turn off filtering, turn of location tracking, as well as access to social media. I have linked their policies below.

I discovered this upon receiving an email notification from Microsoft because my oldest son is turning 13 in April. It was to inform me that once he turns 13, I no longer have the same parental controls over his account. I was flabbergasted. My husband and I are incredibly careful when it comes to Internet safety with our four children, it is something we have put a lot of time and effort into, and I could not believe that this is okay for Microsoft to change his settings where he can turn off our monitoring and we couldn’t do anything about it. We do not allow our children to have any access to social media because of all of the research that shows how harmful it is. But with this change in settings, he could turn his social media on and have accounts that we don't know about. This is so incredibly dangerous.

Thirteen is not an adult. There is absolutely no reason why we should be allowing Microsoft, Google, or Apple to enforce this dangerous policy on parents across the country. This is child trafficking waiting to happen. This is pornography addiction for our sons and daughters waiting to happen. I would like to see it included in legislation a rule that tech companies are required to allow monitoring and restrictions by parents for children under the age of 18 unless they wish to opt out. Children are children and their parents are their parents. Parental authority is one of the most important rights we have as we are legally and morally RESPONSIBLE for our children.

What if a 13 year old girl turns off parental monitoring, gets onto a Discord server for "boys that like cute teen girls" or something like that, and starts chatting with someone, and then turns her location off and agrees to meet up with this person, and then, shocker, this person is a 42-year-old man and sexually assaults her?! Not only do her parents have no knowledge this relationship has been going on, but they don't even have her location to figure out where she is or where this assault occurred. This is not hypothetical. This is a real thing that happens. I cannot stress to you enough the danger of a lack of parental monitoring with underdeveloped brains.

These policies most likely are and absolutely will cause sexual exploitation, suicide, drug overdoses, and any other number of negative outcomes for the children of our country. Loving, attentive parents who desire to appropriately supervise & protect their children are being systematically undermined by these giant tech companies with no say. Please take action now.

https://support.google.com/families/answer/7106787?hl=en

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/account-billing/microsoft-family-group-roles-permissions-and-data-sharing-2d0764e1-5ec5-f6a1-6898-0bc18f71e318

https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/parent-disclosure/#:~:text=Once%20your%20child%20reaches%20the,without%20participating%20in%20Family%20Sharing