'Social-media companies have failed': Senate passes bills to protect kids online

By Maya Levine

KOSA and COPPA 2.0 would force tech companies to protect children and stop collecting their personal information

The Senate passed two child online-safety bills Tuesday with an unusual degree of bipartisan support. But they may not pass the House for a while.

The Kids Online Safety Act, written by Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal and Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn, would establish a duty of care for online platforms and require them to default to the most protective settings for minors.

The Children and Teens' Online Privacy Protection Act would prohibit targeted advertising to children and teens; establish a Youth Marketing and Privacy division at the Federal Trade Commission; create a means for kids and parents to erase personal information online; and ban the collection of that information from kids ages 13 to 16 without their consent.

COPPA 2.0, introduced by Louisiana Republican Bill Cassidy and Massachusetts Democrat Ed Markey, is a follow-up to the first COPPA, which Markey also authored. COPPA established rules on the collection and use of data from children under 13 and ensured parents' ability to monitor their kids' activity online.

If they pass the House, KOSA and COPPA 2.0 - which the Senate approved by a 91-3 vote - would be the first major tech legislation to pass Congress in over 25 years.

"As the years have passed and technology has evolved, our online world once again started to look like the Wild West, with the desperados in charge exploiting teenagers, exploiting children, using algorithms - powerful algorithms - to target those kids," Markey said on the Senate floor before the vote Tuesday.

Markey first introduced COPPA 2.0 in 2011. "The power of those tech industries has blocked that progress that we needed," he said.

Concerns about social media relate not only to data collection from the vulnerable youth population, but also to the mental-health effects felt by young social-media users.

"Families from all across America have come to the nation's Capitol and said that they've lost children to suicide. They've had children harassed and bullied and had to leave school and move to a different location. They've had the safety and security of their children threatened," said Cantwell, who chairs the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, which sent KOSA and COPPA 2.0 to the Senate floor.

In June, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy proposed that Congress require social-media companies to attach warning labels about mental health to their platforms.

The Biden administration approves of KOSA and COPPA 2.0. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, "Today, the Senate took a major bipartisan step forward in making our kids safer online. As our nation grapples with an unprecedented youth mental-health crisis, there is undeniable evidence that social media and other online platforms have contributed to it.

"As the president said, our kids have been waiting too long for the safety and privacy protections they deserve and which this bill provides. And he is pleased with the overwhelming bipartisan vote in the Senate and encourages the House to send this bill to his desk for his signature without delay," Jean-Pierre told reporters at the White House.

Some stakeholders don't think that KOSA is a viable solution to the youth mental-health crisis. The bill is "unfortunately, effectively a blank check for censorship," according to Evan Greer, director of Fight for the Future, a digital-rights advocacy group leading the STOP KOSA coalition.

"The First Amendment guarantees everyone, including children, the right to access information free from censorship," said Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. Greer called KOSA a "blatantly unconstitutional piece of legislation."

KOSA could lead to the censorship of information that is important or even life-saving, Leventoff said. The STOP KOSA coalition includes numerous reproductive-rights and LGBT-rights organizations who have expressed concerns over KOSA's ability to limit access to the online resources they provide.

Dara Adkinson, executive director of TransOhio, said "KOSA is truly terrifying." While the bill targets specific mental-health concerns such as depression and anxiety, Adkinson's home state of Ohio has argued that transgender people's "mere existence is depressive and a mental disorder," they said.

"The fact is Americans just don't agree about which conversations are beneficial and which conversations are harmful," said Joe Mullin, senior policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "There are things that could make our internet experience safer ... KOSA is about making sure that the wrong content - in the view of the politicians in control - gets offline."

Greer said of COPPA 2.0 that while it has some positive elements, the bill doesn't do enough to comprehensively address privacy violations that affect users of all ages. Greer noted that her coalition is specifically against KOSA.

Microsoft (MSFT), Snap (SNAP) and X have expressed support for the bills. It's a more complicated issue for Meta (META), which is currently in a legal battle with the FTC over privacy, according to Capital Alpha.

While both bills made it through the Senate, they will take some time to get through the House, which is already on August recess and has yet to pass any comparable legislation.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer expressed confidence in the bills' ability to pass Congress, despite the slowdown.

"After the Senate passes KOSA and COPPA tomorrow with a strong bipartisan vote, the House should do the same when they return in September. The bipartisan momentum behind these bills is real and we should seize this opportunity to make a law," Schumer said on the Senate floor Monday.

Sen. Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican, said passage of the legislation represented "strong strides" toward protecting youth.

"Social-media companies have failed to institute measures to adequately protect children and teenagers from these hazards, and we have little indication that things will change without legislative action," Romney said in a statement.

Greer believes that KOSA will likely fail in the House, and if COPPA 2.0 is still attached, it will fail, too. If the bills pass, KOSA will almost certainly be the subject of First Amendment legislation, she said.

-Maya Levine

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07-30-24 1554ET

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