Parents today are navigating a digital landscape that was not designed with families in mind.
We are told to raise children who are digitally fluent while also protecting them from content, contacts and data practices that even adults struggle to understand.
We are expected to be vigilant without hovering, informed without being tech experts and calm while the rules keep changing.
When parents say they feel overwhelmed, that is not a sign of resistance to technology. It is a response to a system that was never built with families in mind.
As an early childhood specialist, mother and published author, I speak regularly with parents across many communities. Despite differences in income, geography and technical skill, their concerns are remarkably consistent.
Parents want their children to benefit from technology without being exposed to inappropriate content, unwanted contact or unclear data practices. Yet they are expected to manage these risks across dozens of apps, each with different safety settings, age thresholds and parental controls.
New laws have been proposed at state and federal levels
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
That expectation does not match how children actually use technology. According to the Pew Research Center, most teens regularly use multiple digital platforms and move fluidly between them throughout the day, making app-by-app oversight unrealistic.
Even when parents try to supervise, the learning curve is steep. A Common Sense Media national study of parents of tweens and teens found that managing children’s media use involves multiple strategies and tools across devices and contexts, which adds complexity for caregivers trying to keep up consistently.
Age verification is another weak point. The Federal Trade Commission has repeatedly warned that many platforms rely on self-reported age, a method that is easily bypassed. Entering a different birth date can take only a few seconds and unlock adult content. As a safeguard, self-reporting offers little meaningful protection.
These gaps help explain why lawmakers are debating where responsibility for child safety should sit in the digital ecosystem.
New legislation (Senate Bill 467) was introduced here in Georgia, and the App Store Accountability Act was introduced at the federal level.
The App Store Accountability Act would move age verification and parental consent to the app store level rather than leaving those determinations to individual apps. Under this approach, parents would approve downloads at a single checkpoint rather than navigating a patchwork of app-specific controls.
App stores already manage distribution and access, making them a centralized place to apply consistent age-based standards.
Other proposals take a different direction. Some continue to rely primarily on self-reported age, despite longstanding concerns about its effectiveness. Others apply only to apps that voluntarily offer separate child and adult experiences, an approach that may encourage companies to abandon youth-specific protections altogether.
Still others would push responsibility back onto individual apps, preserving the fragmented system parents already struggle to manage.
Digital privacy matters, but so does parental control
Some critics of centralized age verification raise serious concerns. Civil liberties advocates warn that moving age checks to the app store level could expand data collection, normalize digital identity verification and create new privacy risks. Others argue that government involvement in digital access decisions could introduce overreach or unintended barriers.
Those concerns deserve scrutiny. But they should not obscure a central fact: The current system already fails children while offering parents little meaningful control.
Today’s digital ecosystem relies on fragmented safeguards spread across dozens of apps. This approach does not meaningfully protect privacy or autonomy. It shifts risk downward to families while allowing platforms to avoid consistent accountability. Several tech advocates have made clear that self-reported age is ineffective, and it’s too easy for teens to click “Yes, I am 18,” and instantly unlock content intended for adults.
Shared responsibility is not a radical idea. The American Academy of Pediatrics has long emphasized that child safety works best when parental guidance is reinforced by structural protections that reduce harm before it occurs.
Fragmentation itself carries risk. As children move across multiple apps, platforms and devices, they encounter different rules, reporting mechanisms and enforcement standards.
Parents are not asking for intrusive surveillance or permanent digital records. We are asking for guardrails that function before harm occurs. A centralized checkpoint does not eliminate parental responsibility. It makes that responsibility manageable.
As children’s online lives continue to expand, the question facing policymakers is not if digital safety matters, but where responsibility for that safety is most effectively placed.
Janice Robinson-Celeste is a former educator and the founder of Successful Black Parenting magazine, a multiaward-winning publication that empowers Black families, and the founder of Secure Children’s Network, an organization that protects children from harmful technology. Robinson-Celeste is also a Public Voices fellow of the OpEd Project in partnership with the National Black Child Development Institute.
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