By Sharina Latch

All parents want their kids to be safe. That’s why I first got involved in politics — because as a mother, I want my children to be able to go to school, to learn, and to grow up protected from forces that don’t have their best interests at heart.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk is a painful reminder of how much the world has changed, and of how hard it has become for parents to control the flood of information our kids are exposed to. What I want for my children is an environment where people can disagree respectfully — where violence is never seen as an option for expressing political beliefs.

But today, a handful of corporations dominate the narrative through their algorithms. Google, Amazon, Meta, and Apple decide what our kids are exposed to and play a huge role in shaping what they believe and how they think. They do it by controlling what words appear when you type a search, what results rise to the top, and which sources are treated as “authorities.”

Think about Wikipedia. When we were kids, teachers wouldn’t even let us use it as a source. Now, Google treats it like gospel. And today, Congress is investigating Wikipedia itself for pervasive bias.

When new platforms like Parler try to break through, the tech giants make sure their monopoly is never threatened. They silence free speech and crush alternatives — and nobody holds them accountable. If they can erase entire platforms, what chance do parents have of finding safer, family-friendly options for our kids?

Imagine a platform designed for kids — with real parental controls and a wider range of viewpoints. There’s nothing in state law preventing Big Tech from buying it out or suffocating it the way they did Parler. In fact, they would likely squash such a competitor so fast, parents would never even know it exists.

In California especially, policymakers have failed to rein in these trillion-dollar giants. Parents deserve the power to raise our children in an environment of free and open debate — the kind of debate Charlie Kirk himself fought for. If we want that vision to become reality, then we need accountability and competition from sources of information that respect parents, protect kids, and put balance ahead of monopoly control.