This week, the Kids Online Safety Act was favorably reported out of committee — an important procedural hurdle in bringing the bill to the floor of the Senate for a vote, and eventually, to the president’s desk. 

KOSA has been a long time coming. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R‑TN) and cosponsor Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) first introduced it in the Senate in 2022 in response to the 2021 Facebook internal leak by Frances Haugen, which revealed harmful effects of Instagram on minors’ mental health and other online harms. It easily cleared the Senate in 2024 by a vote of 91-3, but the House of Representatives was slow to introduce a companion bill and failed to bring it to the floor for a vote before the bill expired at the end of the 118th Congress.