President Joe Biden‘s 2023 State of the Union call for Congress to pass legislation to protect youth safety online preceded a massive legislating effort, one that has not yet yielded results but that parental advocates are hopeful will see success this year.
The year since Biden’s request for new safeguards has featured major lobbying efforts, including hundreds of parents and teenagers appearing before congressional lawmakers with their stories of their loved ones dying by suicide or committing self-harm because of trauma endured on social media. The proceedings culminated in Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg turning around at a public hearing in January to apologize to dozens of parents for the harm that Facebook and Instagram did to their children. Several bills attempting to address these harms await the Senate’s consideration, including one that is expected to succeed if it is ever voted on, although none has passed yet.
The last year has been a “watershed moment insofar as we’ve passed a decade of products designed for adults being used by children and whistleblowers documenting the harms and others coming forward to describe the design features,” Kris Perry, the executive director of the Institute of Digital Media and Child Development told the Washington Examiner.
Biden’s remarks
“We must finally hold social media companies accountable for the experiment they are running on our children for profit,” Biden said during the 2023 State of the Union. “And it’s time to pass bipartisan legislation to stop Big Tech from collecting personal data on kids and teenagers online, ban targeted advertising to children, and impose stricter limits on the personal data these companies collect on all of us.”
Those remarks correlated with growing interest in improved online safety for youth, according to Eleanor Gaetan, vice president and director of public policy at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. Teenager-led coalitions such as Wired Human and parental advocacy groups such as NCOSE testified that social media have adverse effects on young people.
Congress and KOSA
Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) pushed the Kids Online Safety Act through committee over the summer and have garnered support from parents, gay rights groups, and even some tech companies. KOSA would require social media platforms to take additional actions to negate a defined set of harms to minors, including the promotion of suicide, substance abuse, sexual exploitation, and drug or alcohol use. The bill would mandate that social media companies implement tighter controls for young users, including options for limiting screen time, restricting addictive features, and limiting access to user profiles.
The Senate Judiciary Committee voted four other bills through committee, which now await a vote. For example, the EARN IT Act would amend Section 230, a crucial part of telecommunications law protecting websites from being sued for content posted by users, by stripping away the protections if the platforms violate federal and state laws related to child sexual abuse material. COPPA 2.0, an expansion of a 1998 law on data collection, would require Big Tech platforms to collect users’ ages and parental consent before letting them access the platforms.
There are “a lot more bills than I am used to seeing on one particular topic,” Kate Ruane, director of the Center for Democracy and Technology’s Free Expression Project, told the Washington Examiner. She compared it to 2020, when there was a surge of legislation to rein in Section 230 in the wake of President Donald Trump slamming the law for allowing Big Tech to censor content on their platforms.
Of the bills, though, only KOSA has a filibuster-proof number of co-sponsors that would ensure its passage in the Senate. Biden also approved of KOSA, urging Congress to “Pass it. Pass it. Pass it.”
The interest in teenage online safety peaked in a massive hearing on Jan. 31 where the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned the CEOs of Meta, X, Discord, Snap, and TikTok about their approaches to protecting children on their platforms, a hearing that they hoped would help get legislation such as KOSA or EARN IT pushed through the Senate. Several members of the committee were visibly frustrated with the Senate’s inaction, noting how many of the tech bills had bipartisan support upon committee approval but had not gone anywhere since. The event culminated in Zuckerberg’s apology to the parents attending the hearing, where he stated that he was sorry for “everything you have all been through” while emphasizing Meta’s “industry-leading efforts” to stop social media’s harm on young users.
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It appears likely that KOSA has a good chance of getting a floor vote in the Senate this term due to the filibuster-proof number of co-sponsors and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) support, but it still faces speed bumps. Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) has been pushing to attach his bill, the Protecting Kids on Social Media Act, to KOSA. That bill would only allow those 18 or younger to use social media if they have a parent’s permission. The addition of Schatz’s bill has caused some lawmakers to withdraw their support, according to the Washington Post. It could also lead to additional negotiations around the bill, which may make some lawmakers hesitant to support KOSA.
Congress’ time frame to pass KOSA or its similar bills is shrinking. Legislation around government funding takes priority on the floor, often limiting time for floor debates on legislation such as KOSA. Members of Congress are also expected to return to their home states in the summer to begin working on their 2024 campaigns.
