Senate Overwhelmingly Passes Legislation to Protect Children Online, Strengthen Privacy Safeguards

The Senate voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to pass two landmark bills meant to protect children from the harms of social media and ensure children’s user privacy is safeguarded.

By a vote of 91-3, the Senate passed the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, the most significant tech-regulation package of the past two decades. It remains unclear whether the legislation will pass the House, which is currently on recess until September.

“Today, the Senate took a major step forward in protecting children online by passing the bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act,” said Senator Marsha Blackburn, (R., Tenn.,) who first introduced the KOSA legislation with Senator Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) two years ago. “This legislation provides young people and parents with the tools, safeguards, and transparency they need to protect against online harms.”

“This moving and historic day marks a major win for our children. Anyone who doubted whether we’d reach this milestone has never met our advocates – the parents who have lost children and the young people who refused to be treated like Big Tech piggy banks,” Blumenthal stated.

Dozens of conservative organizations have backed the KOSA legislation, with the Heritage Foundation’s advocacy arm Heritage Action deeming it a “key vote” for its legislative scorecard.

Conservatives have expressed support for KOSA provisions strengthening parental control over what their kids see online, and measures to limit the addictiveness and damaging mental health effects social media platforms have shown to have on children. Some conservatives and liberals have criticized what they believe to be child exploitation by large tech companies.

KOSA features instructions for social media platforms to prevent children from being exposed to content that promotes suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse, sexual exploitation, and products they are not legally allowed to consume. The legislation also mandates independent audits and research into how the platforms might be impacting youth mental health.

COPPA is designed to prevent targeted advertisements directed at minors and data collection without the consent of minors. Senators Bill Cassidy (R., La.) and Ed Markey (D., Mass.) authored COPPA to update and strengthen the data privacy protections instituted when the internet was in its infancy.

“The Senate just voted to pass my COPPA 2.0. This overwhelming vote sends a clear signal that Big Tech’s tracking and targeting of young people online must end,” Markey said.

“To all the parents who advocated tirelessly for these bills, who shared their stories of their kids, who turned their grief into grace, thank you,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), addressing parents of children who suffered mental health issues due to social media usage. “They lit a candle. There’s no worse pain and suffering for a parent than losing a child. That kind of pain is incomprehensible.”

The left-wing American Civil Liberties Unions and tech trade association NetChoice have opposed the KOSA legislation on First Amendment and privacy grounds for potentially leading to increased speech restrictions and data collection by tech companies.

NetChoice has challenged laws passed in Florida restricting the ability of social media platforms to moderate content. The Supreme Court sent NetChoice’s challenge to the social media laws back to lower courts to evaluate the scope of the laws.