'The Statistics Tell The Story': Senator Hawley's Introductory Remarks to Protecting Kids Online

[00:00:00] The premise of this bill is very simple. [00:00:02] It is simply this, that our children are [00:00:04] not safe online. And I know that because [00:00:07] the statistics tell the story. Just [00:00:10] looking at the number of reports of [00:00:12] child sex abuse material online the last [00:00:15] year for which we have full data, the [00:00:17] number of images, sexually abusive [00:00:20] images reported online surged to 104 [00:00:24] million. Think about that. 104 million [00:00:28] reported sexually abusive images. That [00:00:32] is up from nearly 450,000 as early as [00:00:35] 2004. In the space of 20 years, we have [00:00:38] seen an explosion of sexual abuse [00:00:41] material online. The data does not lie. [00:00:44] Our children are not safe. But I also [00:00:47] know it because whistleblowers tell us. [00:00:49] The experts from these companies tell us [00:00:52] the truth. I'll never forget sitting in [00:00:54] the Senate Judiciary Committee and [00:00:55] listening to whistleblowers from Meta [00:00:58] talk about the steps their company had [00:01:00] taken to target their products towards [00:01:03] children. And I asked one of these [00:01:04] whistleblowers, "How many kids who come [00:01:06] to your platform would you estimate are [00:01:09] exposed to child sex abuse material?" [00:01:12] She thought for a moment and then she [00:01:14] said, "I would say 100%." I I said, [00:01:18] "Wait a minute, 100% 100%." She said [00:01:23] every child who gets on a Meta platform [00:01:26] whether it's virtual reality whether it [00:01:28] is Instagram whether it is Facebook [00:01:30] itself every child who is on that [00:01:33] platform for any length of time will be [00:01:37] exposed to child sex abuse material. [00:01:40] Every single