Source: San Jose Mercury News (Online Center)
] Date: June 19, 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.''