Senate passes long-awaited bills to boost online safety, privacy for kids

The Senate voted to pass two bills aimed at boosting safety and privacy for kids online in a broad bipartisan vote Tuesday after months of mounting pressure from advocates.

The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and Children’s Online Privacy Protection Action (COPPA) 2.0 together would create regulations governing the features tech and social media companies offer to minors online, and the way they use young users’ data.  

The bills passed by a 91-3 vote. Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) voted against the bills.

In a floor speech before the final vote, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a lead sponsor of KOSA, said the bill does not block content but creates an environment for young users that is “safe by design.”

“At its core this bill is a product design bill,” Blumenthal said, likening it to requirements for seat belts and airbags in cars, or choking warnings on toys with small parts.

“This society steps forward to make products safer, putting people and particularly children over product, and that is what we are requiring social media to do,” he added.

The Senate’s passage of the bills followed years of pressure from children’s online safety advocates to regulate social media’s impact on youth mental health and its potentially addictive features.

The pressure led to a series of hearings, including ones featuring the CEOs of tech companies, as advocates pressured Congress to put regulations in place.  

KOSA creates a duty of care for social media platforms to prevent and mitigate harm to minors, such as that caused by content promoting self-harm, suicide, eating disorders and substance abuse. COPPA 2.0 would add data privacy measures including the ban of targeted advertising to teens and kids online.  

Children’s online safety advocates, including parent advocates who lost their children to cyberbullying and other online harms, cheered the Senate vote on Tuesday. But the bills still need to pass in the House, and the timeline for legislative action is dwindling, especially ahead of a contentious election.

A House version of KOSA was scheduled for an Energy and Commerce Committee markup in June, but the markup was pulled after pushback from GOP leaders to a separate bill, the American Privacy Rights Act, that the panel was also scheduled to consider.

The House last week went into an early August recess and is scheduled to return in early September. 

President Biden issued a statement in support of the bill after it passed and urged the House to send it to his desk to sign “without delay.” He underscored the need for regulations given the rise of artificial intelligence (AI).

“The last time Congress took meaningful action to protect children and teenagers online was in 1998 – before the ubiquity of social media and smartphones. Our kids have been waiting too long for the safety and privacy protections they deserve and which this bill would provide. This is more important than ever with the growing use of AI,” Biden said in a statement.

KOSA still faces some opposition, including from groups funded by or with ties to tech companies that would be regulated by the legislation.

The criticism mainly centers on concerns that the bill would pose issues of censorship online or limit minors from accessing information about sensitive topics, including about gender identity or reproductive health.

The tech industry group NetChoice said “KOSA’s data privacy, cybersecurity, censorship, and constitutional risks remain unaddressed.”

The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) last week issued a statement that the bill “can still be misused to target marginalized communities and politically sensitive information.” Some of CDT’s largest financial supporters are tech companies.

Some LGBTQ+ organizations had initially pushed back on the bill over concerns that duty of care could be interpreted, especially by state attorneys general, in a way that limited teens from accessing information about sexuality, reproductive health and gender identity. Seven LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, including GLAAD and the Human Rights Campaign, dropped their opposition in February after updates to the bill’s text.

Other groups, though, continued to push back on the version of the bill that widely passed Tuesday.

Evan Greer, director of Fight for the Future, said that KOSA will “make kids less safe online” and pledged to push to stop the bill from passing in the House.

ACLU senior policy counsel Jenna Leventoff also criticized the bill and pledged to work to stop it from passing in the House.

“KOSA compounds nationwide attacks on young peoples’ right to learn and access information, on and offline,” Leventoff said in a statement.

Updated at 4:03 p.m. ET.