Youths use Net to pursue adult
freedoms

Published: June 19, 1997

BY STEVE JOHNSON
Mercury News Staff Writer

To adults who cheer the effort to tighten TV
ratings so kids are better protected from sex and
violence, 15yearold Joshua Gilbert offers this
advice:

Mind your own business.

Ditto, he adds, to the growing number of
legislative restrictions aimed at young people
from limiting the hours they can stay out at night
and shielding them from tobacco ads to forcing
them into school uniforms and blocking what they
see on the Internet.

More and more, says Gilbert, spokesman for the
1yearold group Americans for a Society Free
from Age Restrictions, the way society treats kids
``is almost a form of slavery.''

Adults might cringe, but similar appeals for freedom are beginning to echo
across the country particularly with the growth of the Internet, which has
given young people a voice and a means for mobilizing others their age that
they've never before had. A plethora of organizations including some in
the
Bay Area now promote youth rights.

Gilbert, a Canadian, belongs to a group claiming 100 to 200 members and
pushing some of the most radical proposals around. Among them: reducing the
U.S. voting age to 12, letting youngsters drink, doing away with curfews and
repealing ``all government policies that unnecessarily discriminate by age.''

Other recommendations range from granting 14yearolds a legal right to have
sex to letting abused children have more say in where they live.

To some child advocates, this push for pubescent liberty is frivolous and
potentially dangerous. But others, including adults in some mainstream
groups,
share the conviction that society needs to loosen up particularly in
light of
what they see as an onslaught of restrictive measures aimed at kids. As a
lawjournal contributor in the 1970s, even Hillary Rodham Clinton argued that
children deserve greater legal rights.

The television ratings debate in which parent groups and industry
executives
are continuing to discuss proposals to tighten program labeling standards
is
just one example. With the country concerned about juvenile crime and
lawmakers of all ideologies making hay out of protecting children, child
advocates say young people have come under siege.

``Children are being subjected to an abnormal wave of censorship and controls
V Chips, blocking software . . . rating systems, curfews and public school
uniforms,'' grouses a missive from the group YouthSpeak. ``Government taxes
us, yet we have no representation in the very government that takes our money
and does what it wishes.''

Yet another group the Young People Organization opposes restricting
alcohol and tobacco use by age: ``We should not be told what we are to do by
parents or any other adults.''

Education also targeted

Schools are one natural target.

``We don't have a say in what we're getting taught,'' complained 17yearold
Belén Trigueros of San Francisco. She is particularly upset at the lack of
instructional material aimed at minority kids, saying that ``really
offended me.''

Belén plans to meet today with about two dozen local youths to discuss ways
of fighting what the session's organizers call ``institutional
oppression'' by
police, foster care agencies, corporations and others. Put together by the
1yearold San Franciscobased Rising Youth for Social Equity, the meeting
was motivated by a feeling that teens ``have no say in what is happening to
them,'' said codirector Caius Brandao, 35.

Nancy Otto, who works with students for the Northern California chapter of
the American Civil Liberties Union, hears that complaint frequently:

``There are a lot of complaints about locker searches, bringing sniffdogs on
campus. We get a lot of calls about student articles being censored, or
plays.''

In March, after an ACLU lawsuit, the Galt Joint Union High School District in
Sacramento County stopped searching students with drugsniffing dogs. And
on Tuesday, after a suit by the ACLU in Southern California, a judge
temporarily barred the Bassett Unified School District from expelling a
17yearold who had distributed a letter criticizing his principal.

Others want to give young people greater rights to drive, gamble, own credit
cards, sign legal contracts and even run away from home. The National Child
Rights Alliance in North Carolina, for example, favors giving children the
legal
right to leave an abusive home and move into a shelter without first
obtaining
court approval.

The idea is to ``help young people claim control over their lives and to have
their personhood recognized in both the legal and social realms,'' said
39yearold alliance cochairman Jim Senter. ``The idea of child saving
protecting the kids is just part of a general trend in society of
underestimating
the capacity of young people.''

Many advise limits for kids

But most child advocates think children need strong limits.

``There is a period of insanity that we all go through,'' said Robert
Fellmeth,
executive director of the Children's Advocacy Institute in San Diego. Giving
children voting and other rights before they have matured, he said, ``is
going in
the wrong direction.''

In fact, when California Assemblywoman Jackie Speier, DSouth San
Francisco, proposed a constitutional amendment two years ago to give
14yearolds the right to vote, the level of adult anger it provoked was, she
said, ``nothing less than frightening.'' Not surprisingly, it didn't pass.

Compared with other battles, the TVratings issue arouses minor angst. In
fact,
Gilbert has no problem giving viewers more information about the content of
TV shows. But basing ratings on what is perceived acceptable for children is
offensive, he said, because ``we know that people mature at different age
levels.''

Gilbert said he already has his own Web site development company and
considers himself very mature. But even so, he said, there are hassles:

``I can't drive a car, I have to rely on public transportation. I'm very
involved in
the political process, yet I can't vote. . . . And when I walk into a
store, people
think I'm going to steal something because of my age. It's a widespread
problem.''

Even so, he doesn't expect new privileges any time soon.

``I don't think we're ready to make the changes now as a society,'' said
Gilbert.
After all, he said, he's still working on his own parents:

``I've had a hard time convincing them.''