Campaigns
Big Tech’s business model depends on getting children hooked on smartphones, tablets, and an overwhelming array of apps and games designed to monopolize their attention, and mine their personal information for profit.
Fairplay is here to put an end to that, and you can help us right now.
Passing the Kids Online Safety Act
Fairplay has helped lead the historic movement to pass the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which would be the first major law to protect children online since 1998!
Social media has fueled a mental health crisis and has even led to kids dying. But with KOSA, we have an opportunity to change that. This landmark bill would give children the protections they need online and force Big Tech companies to change their dangerous design features and exploitative business model.
Thanks in part to advocacy by Fairplay and ParentsSOS — our network of 20 survivor families whose children died as a result of online harms — KOSA passed the Senate 91-3 in July 2024, advancing further than any similar legislation in that time.
Making schools phone-free
All students deserve an education where they are free to learn, free to engage and free to thrive without the dangers and distractions of phones and social media during the school day. That’s why Fairplay is working with the Phone-Free Schools Movement (PFSM) to make schools phone-free!
This is an important campaign at an important time. A whopping 97% of students use phones during school, and 72% of high school teachers say that cell phones are a major distraction in the classroom. Phone use is harming students’ mental and physical health too, with youth depression and anxiety rates skyrocketing.
That’s why Fairplay and PFSM are working hard to get schools to implement a “bell-to-bell” phone-free school policy that keeps phones away from students from the first bell in the morning to the last bell in the afternoon. To help schools transition to a phone-free environment, we have released a highly successful toolkit for school administrators. We also have a toolkit for ambassadors (community members) who want their schools to go phone-free.
Putting anonymous messaging apps on notice
After Fairplay and survivor parent Kristin Bride filed a complaint, the Federal Trade Commission came down with a historic enforcement action against the app-maker Not Gonna Lie Labs (NGL), which targeted kids with deceptive marketing and a dangerous product.
In our complaint, Fairplay and Bride pointed out that a growing body of research shows that anonymous apps consistently lead to cyberbullying and abusive content. In 2020, Bride’s son Carson died by suicide after being ruthlessly bullied on LMK and Yolo, two apps that allowed users to send anonymous messages.
The FTC’s historic settlement showed that Big Tech does not have carte blanche to offer children products and features that are demonstrably harmful and deceptive. Now, other anonymous peer messaging apps should take note: These products should NOT be targeted to minors.
Advocate against manipulative ed tech
Action Network member, Kailan Carr, was able to get the gamified math app, Prodigy, out of her children’s school. As an observant parent and former teacher, she saw that the app had very little math and lots of manipulative, non-educational game play– and knew there were better ways to get kids excited about math.
In this edition of Action Network Live!, get the full story and learn how you can raise your concerns and make change in your school, too! Guests Rachel Franz, Fairplay’s Education Manager, and Kailan Carr highlight what to look out for in popular education technology, how to approach teachers and other parents without judgment, and how to ask the right questions to ultimately inspire responsible tech use in your child’s school!