United States Senate Passes the Kids Online Safety Act

Senate passes the Kids Online Safety Act
The landmark piece of legislation heads to the House.

By Lauren Feiner, a senior policy reporter at The Verge, covering the intersection of Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill. She spent 5 years covering tech policy at CNBC, writing about antitrust, privacy, and content moderation reform. theverge.com, July 30, 2024

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images

The Senate passed the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (also known as COPPA 2.0), the first major internet bills meant to protect children to reach that milestone in two decades. A legislative vehicle that included both KOSA and COPPA 2.0 passed 91–3.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called it “a momentous day” in a speech ahead of the vote, saying that “the Senate keeps its promise to every parent who’s lost a child because of the risks of social media.” He called for the House to pass the bills “as soon as they can.”

KOSA is a landmark piece of legislation that a persistent group of parent advocates played a key role in pushing forward — meeting with lawmakers, showing up at hearings with tech CEOs, and bringing along photos of their children, who, in many cases, died by suicide after experiencing cyberbullying or other harms from social media. These parents say that a bill like KOSA could have saved their own children from suffering and hope it will do the same for other children.


The bill works by creating a duty of care for online platforms that are used by minors, requiring they take “reasonable” measures in how they design their products to mitigate a list of harms, including online bullying, sexual exploitation, drug promotion, and eating disorders. It specifies that the bill doesn’t prevent platforms from letting minors search for any specific content or providing resources to mitigate any of the listed harms, “including evidence-informed information and clinical resources.”

Parent advocates believe this legal duty of care will protect children, but digital rights, free speech, and some LGBTQ+ advocates believe the bill could actually harm marginalized kids by creating a chilling effect and pressuring platforms to limit free expression on the internet. In a recent letter to senators, groups including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), LGBT Tech, and NetChoice wrote that the duty of care could result in “aggressive filtering of content by companies preventing access to important, First Amendment-protected, educational, and even lifesaving content” to avoid liability. They also fear it will lead platforms to impose age verification systems, raising additional privacy and constitutional concerns.

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https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/30/24205718/senate-passes-kids-online-safety-act-kosa-content-moderation