The Eyes on the Board Act Is Yet Another Misguided Attempt to Limit Social Media for Teens

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Young people’s access to social media continues to be under attack by overreaching politicians. The latest effort, Senator Ted Cruz’s blunt “Eyes on the Board” Act, aims to end social media’s use entirely in schools. This heavy-handed plan to cut federal funding to any school that doesn’t block all social media platforms may have good intentions—like ensuring kids are able to focus on school work when they’re behind a desk—but the ramifications of such a bill would be bleak, and it’s not clear that it would solve any actual problem.

Eyes on the Board would prohibit any school from receiving any federal E-Rate funding subsidies if it also allows access to social media. Schools and libraries that receive this funding are already required to install internet filters; the Children’s Internet Protection Act, or CIPA, requires that these schools must block or filter Internet access to “visual depictions” that are obscene, child pornography, or harmful to minors, as well as requiring the monitoring of the online activities of minors for the same purpose. In return, the E-Rate program subsidizes internet services for schools and libraries in districts with high rates of poverty. 

This bill is a brazen attempt to censor information and to control how schools and teachers educate.

First, it’s not clear that there is a problem here that needs fixing. In practice, most schools choose to block much, much more than social media sites. This is a problem—these filters likely stop students from accessing educational information, and many tools flag students for accessing sites that aren’t blocked, endangering their privacy. Some students’

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