KIDS kids online safety act
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Kids Online Safety Act
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The Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act (KOSPA), known in the House, in some Senate versions, and commonly in the general public as the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), is a proposed legislation in the United States first introduced in the Senate in 2022. The bill aims to establish guidelines to protect minors from harmful material on social media platforms through a duty of care system and requiring covered platforms to disable "addicting" design features to minors.
The bill originates from the 2021 Facebook leak, which led to a congressional investigation of Big Tech's lack of protection for minors. Senators Richard Blumenthal (D‑CT) and Marsha Blackburn (R‑TN) co-sponsored the bill and introduced it to the Senate in 2022. It was revived for the 2023–2024 congressional term and while passed by the Senate in July 2024, it failed to advance out of the House of Representatives before the end of the session.
Though KOSA has bipartisan support by politicians, it has been criticized by both liberals and conservatives for potentially enabling censorship, including material important to marginalized groups, as well as material related to racism, abortion, and transgender issues.
== Relationship with COPPA ==
In 1998, Congress passed the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which came after concerns about data collection practices towards minors. The legislation set guides on child online safety, notably banning companies from knowingly collecting the data for anyone under 13 without parental consent.
In the years following COPPA, as the popularity of the Internet rose drastically, concerns from parents about the safety of social media arose out of concerns that it was contributing to a mental health crisis among teens, eventually leading to a push for new child online safety legislation.
== History ==
KOSA was introduced to the Senate by senators Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn on February 16, 2022. The bill was a direct result after Frances Haugen, a data scientist for Facebook, leaked internal files through The Wall Street Journal in 2021 that showed negative effects of Instagram on minors' mental health, among other topics. The leak led to a Congressional investigation of Big Tech's lack of protection for young users with Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri testifying to Congress in December 2021. Blumenthal, citing the leaked Facebook data, stated that the bill's intention was "not to burn the internet to the ground, not to destroy tech platforms or the internet or these sites; it is simply to enlist the social media platforms in this joint effort to achieve what should be a common goal—protecting children."
The bill was advanced by the Senate Commerce Committee in July 2022, alongside an updated version of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the Children and Teens' Online Privacy Protection Act (also known as COPPA 2.0). Both were poised to be passed in the Senate as part of larger legislation near the end of the term for the 117th Congress, but failed to pass.
President Joe Biden pushed Congress to pass legislation to protect children online during his 2023 State of the Union Address, leading Blackburn and Blumenthal to reintroduce KOSA in the Senate on May 2, 2023. KOSA and COPPA 2.0 were approved by the Senate Commerce Committee on July 27, 2023.
In November 2023, whistleblower and former Meta engineering director Arturo Beja testified in congress before a Senate subcommittee hearing about social media and the teen mental health crisis, leading to a renewed push for the bill.
In January 2024, the Senate held a meeting with the CEOs of Meta, TikTok, Snap Inc., Discord, and Twitter regarding child safety. This hearing led to a renewed push for the bill. By February 2024, the bill gained enough backers in the Senate to assure its passage, though there had yet to be a companion bill introduced in the House of Representatives. An attempt was made to append it into the FAA reauthorization act in May 2024. Later, the Senate combined KOSA with COPPA 2.0 and the Filter Bubble Transparency Act into the Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act (S. 2073). After introduction on the 23rd by Chuck Schumer as an amendment replacing the Eliminate Useless Reports Act, the new bill passed by a vote of 91–3 on July 30, 2024.
The House of Representatives had yet to pass their version of the bill by July 2024. A planned markup session for KOSA and other bills by the House Energy and Commerce commission in late June 2024 was abruptly canceled, with speculation that there were disagreements with Republican leaders on a separate privacy bill. In August 2024, Punchbowl News reported that the Republican leadership of the House would not advance KOSA, citing a staffer who referred to "concerns across our Conference".
The bill advanced out of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on September 18, 2024, though several amendments focused around the "duty of care" portions of the legislation were added hastily before advancing, creating larger gaps with the Senate version causing some lawmakers to protest or withdraw their support for the bill. No further actions were taken on the bill before the end of the 118th Congress, nullifying its progress. Blumenthal reintroduced the bill in the 119th Congress (2025-2026) in May 2025.