Protecting Kids Online Means Empowering Parents, by Ken Blackwell 

By Ken Blackwell, Patriot Post, March 24, 2025

App stores must secure parental approval and age verification before a minor under 16 years old can download an app of any kind.

When I was growing up in Ohio in the 1960s, there was no such thing as a private teenage world. My friends and I all knew each other’s parents, and we were held accountable for our speech and our behavior by a network of moms and dads who knew one another. While local communities were knit more closely together back then, things are very different in America today. Many teenagers with smartphones have unfettered access to the online world, while at the same time, many parents want more control over the content their teens are accessing.

As a Senior Fellow at Family Research Council and someone who has served as a trustee at Grove City College, Xavier, and Wilberforce University, I have spent significant time and effort throughout my career thinking about how to promote the healthy physical, mental, and spiritual development of young people. When it comes to college students, you’re dealing with legal adults who can make their own decisions, and strategies for how to help them rarely include direct parental involvement. When it comes to serving minors, however, parental empowerment is the fundamental component of how an educational institution, or the government, must conduct itself. …

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