US Senate panel advances online child safety bill

The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation unanimously advanced the bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) on Wednesday, moving the online child safety bill one step closer to a Senate vote while leaving unresolved differences with the House of Representatives.

KOSA would require covered online platforms to exercise reasonable care to prevent and mitigate specified harm to minors.

It would also require platforms to provide children and parents with additional safeguards and controls over features that can encourage compulsive use, personalized recommendations, and unwanted interactions.

“We’re sending a message to Big Tech that the era of Big Tech profiting off of our children is over,” said bill sponsor, Republican Marsha Blackburn, during the committee’s markup of the legislation.

“Congress needs to do more. [This bill] imposes a duty of care on social media platforms so that these companies have to take reasonable care to make sure they are not creating harm and implementing products that harm kids,” said Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell.

“We’ve now passed KOSA again unanimously out of this committee. I’m confident we’ll pass it on the Senate floor, and then we’ll continue the hard work and negotiations with the House to get it over the finish line into the president’s desk,” said committee chair Ted Cruz.

The committee considered KOSA as part of a broader executive session devoted to children’s online safety and AI.

Separate measures addressed the use of children’s information by AI services and potential risks associated with AI-enabled toys. Those proposals are independent bills and are not provisions of KOSA.

The vote marked another Senate effort to enact KOSA after an earlier version passed the chamber overwhelmingly in 2024 but failed to clear the House.

The latest action could send the measure back to the full Senate, although no floor vote has been guaranteed.

Its path remains uncertain because House lawmakers have pursued the KIDS Act, a separate package with a different regulatory structure. The bill was passed by the House last month as a disjointed package of legislation that would regulate web browsing and private messaging.

The House legislation includes elements drawn from KOSA but does not duplicate the Senate measure, leaving the chambers divided over the scope of platform duties and federal protections for minors.

“Instead of passing a federal standard that will protect America’s children from Big Tech’s greed, the House of Representatives just passed legislation that is a pale imitation of Big Tech accountability,” Blackburn and Democrat Sen. Richard Blumenthal said at the time.

“The House’s decision to strip out the duty of care will only maintain the status quo in which Big Tech uses our kids as profit centers and leaves parents to pick up the pieces,” the two lawmakers added. “We will not back down from the fight to pass the stronger, more widely supported version of the Kids Online Safety Act, and we will not greenlight hollow reforms that allow Big Tech’s predatory business model to remain intact.”

Cantwell said Wednesday that the just passed Kids Online Safety Act “imposes a duty of care on social media platforms so that these companies have to take reasonable care to make sure they are not creating harm and implementing products that harm kids.”

Supporters argue KOSA would establish overdue protections against design practices and recommendation systems that can expose young users to harmful material.

Civil liberties organizations have warned that broadly written safety duties could encourage platforms to restrict lawful content or adopt more intrusive methods of determining users’ ages.

Article Topics

age verification  |  Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA)  |  legislation  |  U.S. Government