Our Kids Can't Face this Battle Alone. They Need You. They Need US Working Together.
 

When you give your most generous gift to Enough Is Enough^®, you are helping us to fight a battle our children are facing daily in the digital world. They can't fight this battle alone. They need all of us coming together to defend their safety and innocence online. Below is just a snapshot of what our kids are encountering online:

Bark, which provides online monitoring tools that alert parents and caregivers to potential online dangers, processed 5.6 billion activities in 2023 on family accounts across texts, email, YouTube, and 30+ apps and social media platforms. Here's what they found:

• Self-harm/suicide: 33% of tweens/57% of teens were involved in a self-harm/suicidal situation
• Sexual content: 58% of tweens/75% of teens encountered nudity or content of a sexual nature.
• Anxiety: 19% of tweens/36% of teens used language or were exposed to language about anxiety
• Drugs/alcohol: 58% of tweens/77% of teens engaged in conversations surrounding drugs/alcohol
• Bullying: 67% of tweens/76% of teens experienced bullying as a bully, victim, or witness
• Depression: 26% of tweens/38% of teens engaged in conversations about depression
• Disordered eating: 9% of tweens/21% of teens engaged with or encountered content about disordered eating
• Predators: 8% of tweens/10% of teens encountered predatory behaviors from someone online
• Violence: 68% of tweens/82% of teens expressed or experienced violent subject matter/thoughts

Last year, legal action was filed by more than 40 states that accused social media companies of designing products that are deliberately addictive and that fuel the youth mental health crisis in order to increase profits. The lawsuits paint a picture of how these companies brush aside safety concerns and “exploit and manipulate” children. 

While progress is being made to improve child safety on some platforms, it is clear that there is much work to be done. In 2019, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) received 16.9 million reports of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) to their CyberTipline. In 2022, just three years later, this number nearly doubled to over 32 million reports, marking the highest number of reports ever received in one year.

• Enough Is Enough^® (EIE) joined experts from the child advocacy community in calling for Meta to reconsider plans to implement end-to-end encryption (E2EE) on Messenger and Facebook, which will prevent the detection of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) on those platforms.  Meta has a responsibility to advance technical solutions and keep kids safe on its platforms!

• EIE will be present on January 31 for an upcoming Senate Judiciary hearing scheduled for January 31, 2024, on online child sexual exploitation, featuring testimony from the CEOs of Meta, X, TikTok, Snap, and Discord. As EIE has done for the past three decades, we will continue to advocate for online child safety legislation designed to hold Big Tech accountable and help to ensure the safety of those who use social media platforms. 

To sum up what a victory in this battle might look like, consider what EIE CEO and President Donna Rice Hughes shared when asked the audience to "imagine what a safer internet would look like" during a Ted Talk she gave. You can hear her thoughts here:

Let's not only imagine a safer internet, but let's make this vision a reality and ensure it for the sake of our children. 

You can help EIE right now as we strive daily to:

• Educate and Empower the Public
• Advocate for Greater Corporate Responsibility
• Advocate for Strong Public Policy 

Will you help us today and Fund the Fight? We owe it to our children and to future generations. Thank you for playing such a critical role in this battle to protect kids online.