Senate passes bills to protect kids online

The United States Senate voted to pass two bills to boost safety and privacy for kids online July 31.

The two bills, which add privacy protection for children and limit targeted advertisements toward them, passed with support by senators from both sides of the aisle, 91-3.

The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) would provide children and parents with better tools to protect themselves online. The Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0) would modernize and strengthen the online privacy law for children, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

It has been more than a decade since Congress enacted meaningful legislation to protect children on the internet. Federal laws on the books were written before Instagram, Snapchat or TikTok were even created.

U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, founder and co-chair of the Senate Artificial Intelligence Caucus, applauded Senate passage of legislation he co-sponsored to protect children online and safeguard their privacy while holding "Big Tech" accountable.

“Our kids use the internet for homework, learning, gaming and staying connected with friends. As parents, we must ensure the internet is a safer, more secure space for children and teens. That’s the goal of this legislation,” Heinrich said. “These two bills will empower parents to safeguard their kids' well-being and privacy — while holding Big Tech accountable. It’s time for social media companies to prioritize our children’s safety and privacy over engagement and profits. With this legislation, we tell Big Tech: Our children’s private lives are not for sale. I will continue to fight for policies that put the interests of New Mexicans first by putting guardrails on Big Tech that protect safety, privacy and civil liberties."

Heinrich pushed to update language to ensure that the focus of the bill was to protect children from addictive and harmful social media platform design features, not to empower overzealous state attorneys general to police and penalize children for accessing and creating online content.

The Kids Online Safety Act

• Requires social media platforms to provide minors with options to protect their information, disable addictive product features and opt out of personalized algorithmic recommendations.

• Platforms are also required to enable the strongest privacy settings for kids by default.

• Gives parents new controls to help protect their children and spot harmful behaviors, and provides parents and educators with a dedicated channel to report harmful behavior.

• Creates a duty for online platforms to prevent and mitigate specific dangers to minors, including promotion of suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse, sexual exploitation, and advertisements for certain illegal products such as tobacco and alcohol.

• Ensures that parents and policymakers know whether online platforms are taking meaningful steps to address risks to kids by requiring independent audits and research into how these platforms impact the well-being of kids and teens.

The Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act

• Builds on COPPA by prohibiting internet companies from collecting personal information from users who are 13-16 years old without their consent.

• Bans targeted advertising to children and teens.

• Revises COPPA’s “actual knowledge” standard to close the loophole that allows covered platforms to ignore kids and teens on their site.

• Creates an “eraser button” by requiring companies to permit users to eliminate personal information from a child or teen when technologically feasible.

• Establishes data minimization rules to prohibit the excessive collection of children and teens’ data.

President Joe Biden released the following statement about the Senate passing both bills:

“Today, the Senate took a crucial bipartisan step forward to make our kids safer online. There is undeniable evidence that social media and other online platforms contribute to our youth mental health crisis. Today our children are subjected to a wild west online, and our current laws and regulations are insufficient to prevent this. It is past time to act. While my administration has taken important steps to address the harms of social media and online platforms, we need action by Congress to protect our kids online and hold Big Tech accountable for the national experiment they are running on our children for profit. This bill answers the call from the Unity Agenda of my first State of the Union Address, when I said it was time to strengthen privacy protections, ban targeted advertising to children, and demand tech companies stop collecting personal data on our children.

"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. ... I encourage the House to send this bill to my desk for signature without delay.”