The Senate passed the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children and Teens\u2019 Online Privacy Protection Act\u00a0(also known as COPPA 2.0), the first major internet bills meant to protect children to reach that milestone in two decades. <\/strong>A legislative vehicle that included both KOSA and COPPA 2.0 passed 91-3. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called it \u201ca momentous day\u201d in a speech ahead of the vote, saying that \u201cthe Senate keeps its promise to every parent who\u2019s lost a child because of the risks of social media.\u201d He called for the House to pass the bills \u201cas soon as they can.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n KOSA is a landmark piece of legislation that a persistent group of parent advocates have played a key role in pushing forward \u2014 meeting with lawmakers, showing up at hearings with tech CEOs,<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The bill works by creating a duty of care for online platforms that are used by minors, requiring they take \u201creasonable\u201d 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\u2019t prevent platforms from letting minors search for any specific content or providing them resources to mitigate any of the listed harms, \u201cincluding evidence-informed information and clinical resources.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Parent advocates believe this legal duty of care will protect children, but digital rights, free speech, and some LGBTQ+ advocates believe that 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<\/a>, groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), LGBT Tech, and industry groups like NetChoice, wrote that the duty of care could result in \u201caggressive filtering of content by companies preventing access to important, First Amendment-protected, educational, and even lifesaving content\u201d to avoid liability. They also fear it will lead platforms to impose age verification systems, raising additional privacy and constitutional concerns.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n These concerns are not coming out of left field. Lead cosponsor Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) has previously justified the bill on the basis that \u201cwe should be protecting minor children from the transgender in this culture<\/a>.\u201d Since then, the bill was been amended in response to the concerns of LGBTQ advocates, and the revisions were sufficient to get some organizations \u2014 like GLAAD and the Trevor Project \u2014\u00a0to drop their opposition to the bill<\/a>. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n In a speech on the Senate floor ahead of Tuesday\u2019s vote, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), another of the bill\u2019s lead sponsors, said the law not aiming to block or censor content. \u201cWe\u2019re simply creating an environment that is safe by design. And at its core, this bill is a product design bill.\u201d Blumenthal compared KOSA to other efforts throughout his career to \u201cprotect consumers against defective products that are designed to make more money and more profits at the risk or expense of injury to people,\u201d including by targeting cigarettes and car manufacturers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Blackburn said that while \u201cthere are laws that protect children from buying alcohol, buying tobacco, buying pornography,\u201d the same kinds of protections are lacking on the internet. \u201cWhen you look at the social media platforms, there are no guardrails.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The duty of care is probably the most controversial, but KOSA contains a host of other provisions. KOSA also requires safeguards for kids on the internet, like preventing unknown adults from communicating with kids or viewing their personal data, restricting the ability to share minors\u2019 geolocation data, and letting kids\u2019 accounts opt out of personalized recommendations or at least limit categories of recommendations. Platforms would also need to default kids\u2019 accounts to the strictest level of privacy settings and make it easy to delete their personal data and limit the time they spend on the service. The law would also require a handful of parental control tools, allowing parents to view their children\u2019s privacy and account settings, restrict their purchases, and limit how much time they spend.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n COPPA 2.0, which builds on a 1998 children\u2019s privacy law by the same name, would raise the age covered by those protections from those under 13 to those under 17. It would also ban targeted advertising to kids covered by the bill. Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), the lead sponsor of the new bill, was also the lead sponsor of the original COPPA. Markey said in a speech on the Senate floor that covering kids under 13 was \u201call I could get\u201d in 1998. Markey said the original law \u201chas done a lot of good, but as the years have passed, and technology has evolved, our online world once again, started to look like the Wild West.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n The House recently decided to adjourn a week early<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Two of the senators who voted no \u2014 Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rand Paul (R-KY) \u2014 said they had concerns that the bill could potentially be used to censor information. Wyden wrote in a thread on X<\/a> that while changes to the bill have made it \u201cless likely that the bill can be used as a tool for MAGA extremists to wage war on legal and essential information to teens,\u201d he still worries it \u201ccould be used to sue services that offer privacy technologies like encryption or anonymity features that kids rely on to communicate securely and privately without being spied on by predators online.\u201d Paul called it a \u201cpandora\u2019s box of unintended consequences.\u201d Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) also voted no.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The bills now move to the House, which had about a week left to take them up before the August recess \u2014 except that the chamber recently decided to adjourn a week early<\/a>. Prior to Thursday\u2019s procedural vote, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said in a statement to The Verge<\/em> that he was<\/a>\u00a0\u201clooking forward to reviewing the details of the legislation that comes out of the Senate. Parents should have greater control and the necessary tools to protect their kids online. I am committed to working to find consensus in the House.\u201d But it will be harder to pick up momentum after Congress\u2019 break, given the political dynamics of passing substantive policy in the months right before a presidential election.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Should the bills become law, KOSA is still likely to face opposition in the courts. NetChoice, which represents major tech platforms like Google and Meta, has sued to block several other laws throughout the country with similar goals of protecting kids. NetChoice has (in many cases<\/a>, successfully<\/a>) argued that such bills pose a risk to free expression that would not withstand First Amendment scrutiny. If challenged, KOSA will also have to contend with<\/a> a recent Supreme Court ruling,<\/a> where the majority opinion said that content moderation and curation are protected forms of expression<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n