U.S.A. Page 8 n THE ASIAN REPORTER Book ban attempts hit record high in 2022, library org says April 3, 2023 Utah social media law is ambitious, but is it enforceable? By Hillel Italie By Barbara Ortutay The Associated Press The Associated Press EW YORK — Attempted book bans and restrictions at school and public libraries continue to surge, setting a record in 2022, according to a new report from the American Library Association (ALA). More than 1,200 challenges were compiled by the association in 2022, nearly double the then-record total from 2021 and by far the most since the ALA began keeping data 20 years ago. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” says Deborah Caldwell-Stone, who directs the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. “The last two years have been exhausting, frightening, outrage inducing.” The report not only documents the growing number of challenges, but also their changing nature. A few years ago, complaints usually arose with parents and other community members and referred to an individual book. Now, the requests are often for multiple removals, and organized by national groups such as the conserva- tive Moms for Liberty, which has a mission of “unifying, educating, and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government.” Last year, more than 2,500 different books were objected to, compared to 1,858 in 2021 and just 566 in 2019. In numerous cases, hundreds of books were challenged in a single complaint. The ALA bases its findings on media accounts and voluntary reporting from libraries and acknowledges that the numbers might be far higher. Librarians around the country have told of being harassed and threatened with violence or legal action. “Every day professional librarians sit down with parents to thoughtfully deter- mine what reading material is best suited for their child’s needs,” ALA president Lessa Kanani’opua Pelayo-Lozada said in a statement. “Now, many library workers face threats to their employment, their personal safety, and in some cases, threats of prosecution for providing books to youth they and their parents want to read.” Caldwell-Stone says that some books have been targeted by liberals because of tah’s sweeping social media legislation passed in late March is an ambitious attempt to shield children and teens from the ill effects of social media and empower parents to decide whether their kids should be using apps like TikTok or Instagram. What’s not clear is if — and how — the new rules can be enforced and whether they will create unintended consequences for kids and teens already coping with a mental health crisis. And while parental rights are a central theme of Utah’s new laws, experts point out that the rights of parents and the best interests of children are not always aligned. For instance, allowing parents to read their kids’ private messages may be harm- ful to some children, and age verification requirements could give tech companies access to kids’ personal information, including biometric data, if they use tools such as facial recognition to check ages. “Children may be put at increased risk if these laws are enforced in such a way that they’re not allowed to some privacy, if they are not allowed some ability for freedom of speech or autonomy,” said Kris Perry, executive director of the nonprofit Children and Screens: Institute of Digital Media and Child Development. The laws, which will go into effect in a year, impose a digital curfew on people under age 18, require minors to get parental consent to sign up for social media apps, and force companies to verify the ages of all their Utah users. They also require tech companies to give parents access to their kids’ accounts and private messages, which has raised alarms for child advocates who say this could further harm children’s mental health by depriving them of their right to privacy. This is especially true for LGBTQ+ kids whose parents are not accepting of their identity. The rules could drastically transform how people in the conservative state access social media and the internet, and if successful, serve as a model for other states to enact similar legislation. But even if the laws clear the inevitable lawsuits from tech giants, it’s not clear how Utah will be able to enforce them. Take age verification, for instance. Various measures exist that can verify a person’s age online. Someone could upload a government ID or consent to the use of facial recognition software to prove they are the age they say they are. “Some of these verification measures are wonderful, but then also require the collection of sensitive data. And those can pose new risks, especially for marginalized youth,” Perry said. “And it also puts a new kind of burden on parents to monitor their children. These things seem simple and straightforward on their face, but in reality, there are new risks that may emerge in terms of ... collection of additional data on children.” Just as teens have managed to obtain fake IDs to drink, they are also savvy at skirting online age regulations. “In Southeast Asia, they’ve been trying this for years, for decades, and kids always get around it,” said Gaia Bernstein, author of Unwired, a book on how to fight technology addiction. The problem, she said, is that the Utah rules don’t require social networks to prevent kids from going online. Instead, they are making the parents responsible. “I think that’s going to be the weak link in the whole thing, because kids drive their parents insane,” Bernstein said. There is no precedent in the United States for such drastic regulation of social media, although several states have similar rules in the works. On the federal level, companies are already prohibited from collecting data on children under age 13 without parental consent under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. For this reason, social media platforms already ban kids under 13 from signing up to their sites — but children can easily skirt the rules, both with and without their parents’ consent. Perry suggests that instead of age veri- fication, there are steps tech companies could take to make their platforms less harmful, less addictive, across the board. For instance, Instagram and TikTok could Continued on page 9 U N FRIVOLOUS BANS. Bills facilitating the restric- tion of books have been proposed or passed in Ari- zona, Iowa, Texas, Missouri, and Oklahoma, among other states. In Florida, where governor Ron DeSantis has approved laws to review reading materials and limit classroom discussion of gender identity and race, books pulled indefinitely or temporarily include John Green’s Looking for Alaska and Grace Lin’s picture story Dim Sum for Everyone!” racist language — notably Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn — but the vast majority of complaints come from conservatives, directed at works with LGBTQIA+ or racial themes. They include Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer, Jonathan Evison’s Lawn Boy, Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give, and a book-length edition of the “1619 Project,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning report from The New York Times on the legacy of slavery in the U.S. Bills facilitating the restriction of books have been proposed or passed in Arizona, Iowa, Texas, Missouri, and Oklahoma, among other states. In Florida, where governor Ron DeSantis has approved laws to review reading materials and limit classroom discussion of gender identity and race, books pulled indefinitely or temporarily include John Green’s Looking for Alaska, Colleen Hoover’s Hopeless, Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, and Grace Lin’s picture story Dim Sum for Everyone! More recently, Florida’s Martin County school district removed dozens of books from its middle schools and high schools, including numerous works by novelist Jodi Picoult, Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize- winning Beloved, and James Patterson’s “Maximum Ride” thrillers, a decision which the bestselling author has criticized Continued on page 9 I - 205 Toll Project Share your feedback Learn how tolling I-205 bridges helps us: 9 Become earthquake-ready 5 Reduce congestion 3 2 6 1 5 7 8 6 6 2 1 5 7 8 9 6 4 2 Improve safety Informational webinars: March 14 and March 16 Virtual Public Hearing: April 4, 2023 6 5 Comment by April 21, 2023 Visit OregonTolling.org 8 SCAN ME Is your organization holding an event in celebration of Asian Heritage Month? To be included in The Asian Reporter’s Asian Heritage Month special issue, please send your event listing to <news@asianreporter.com> by Monday, April 17, 2023. Please include the event title, date, time, and location with address; a brief summary describing the event; and a contact phone number (required) that can be published. E-mail and website addresses may also be included. 9 7 5 MEDIUM Difficulty 3 level: Medium # 59 #96553 Instructions: Fill in the grid so that the digits 1 through 9 appear one time each in every row, col- umn, and 3x3 box. Solution to last issue’s puzzle Puzzle #51239 (Easy) All solutions available at <www.sudoku.com>. 6 3 2 1 9 8 7 4 5 5 4 1 2 7 6 9 8 3 8 9 7 5 3 4 1 2 6 4 5 8 7 1 2 6 3 9 1 7 9 4 6 3 8 5 2 3 2 6 9 8 5 4 1 7 9 6 3 8 2 1 5 7 4 2 1 4 6 5 7 3 9 8 7 8 5 3 4 9 2 6 1