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Public Knowledge — The KIDS Act Finally Gets Kids' Online Safety Mostly Right
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The KIDS Act Finally Gets Kids’ Online Safety Mostly Right
Young people are being harmed right now, and this version of the KIDS Act offers real protection for kids while respecting their privacy and rejecting content/access bans.
By Morgan Wilsmann
June 29, 2026
On June 22, the U.S. House dropped its heavily negotiated package of bills focused on kids’ online safety. This package is a significant revision from the package of bills introduced in March, which passed out of the Energy and Commerce Committee on party lines. In the months since, House members have successfully negotiated out the privacy-invasive, surveillance-enabling, speech-restricting, and heavy-handed preemption elements that made the initial package a nonstarter for Public Knowledge. The safe-by-design and privacy-strengthening bits remain and are improved in ways that align with the standards we set in our kids’ online safety policy framework, “The Kids Aren’t Alright Online: How To Build a Safer, Better Internet for Everyone.”
What Changed Our Mind About KOSA?
The biggest piece of legislation in the package is the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) – a contentious bill that has seen many, many iterations since it was first introduced in May 2023. We favor the KIDS Act’s version of KOSA, which states that “nothing in the bill shall be construed to … impose a duty of care” – contrasting with the Senate version that explicitly includes a duty of care that would require platforms to mitigate legal-but-objectionable content for minors, like content on eating disorders, drugs, and violence. We believe kids are harmed not by incidental exposure to problematic content but by platform features that promote compulsive use and connect minors to strangers. As we’ve seen in evidence from social media negligence and addiction lawsuits, kids are most often harmed when connected to strangers seeking to sell them drugs, extort their money, or exploit them, and when platforms encourage compulsive use through endless scrolling, notifications, and gamification.
Instead of a duty of care, the KIDS Act version of KOSA includes language requiring covered platforms to have “reasonable policies and procedures” regarding content such as objectively severe violence; sexual exploitation and abuse; sale and distribution of drugs; gambling; and financial fraud. Critics argue the language either risks over-moderation or is too weak to require meaningful enforcement, but neither of these opposing criticisms accurately reflects the bill’s text, in our view.
The requirement for “reasonable policies and procedures” strikes a balance between ensuring platforms have clear policies regarding objectively egregious content for minor users, while still allowing leeway in determining whether such content violates those policies. Both the First Amendment and Section 230 give platforms the right to moderate and present content as they see fit. The bill’s language acknowledges this right while requiring platforms to give users a clear understanding of why and how objectionable content is handled – without forcing platforms to remove or restrict it. This balance may mean minor users may still stumble across offensive posts, but to reiterate, it’s Public Knowledge’s position that harm does not stem from exposure to content, but the design features that promote excessive use and harmful interactions.
At the core of the Public Knowledge online safety framework is the obligation for platforms to deploy the most protective defaults for minor users, which is exactly what KOSA requires. The defaults include: minor accounts cannot be recommended to other users; features that promote compulsive usage are limited by default; geolocation is turned off; the ability to opt out of the personalized recommendation system is provided; and the option to control the categories of recommended content is available. Child users (under 13 years old) will need verifiable parental consent to change these defaults, but teens (ages 13-17) can manage their messaging controls themselves. We like that KOSA treats teens as growing rights-holders, scaling control by handing adolescents the keys to their own experience.
The Rest of the Package
The Safer GAMING Act (Safer Guarding of Adolescents from Malicious Interactions on Network Games Act) applies to providers of internet-connected video games that let players communicate with one another. For users they know or should know are minors under 17, the bill requires covered gaming platforms to have default safeguards that limit who can contact a child in-game. It also requires easy-to-use controls, available to minors and parents alike, that prevent a minor’s profile from being recommended to adult players; restrict in-game purchases and financial transactions; and cap time spent. Given that gaming platforms are a notorious vector for predatory-stranger contact (grooming, sextortion, fentanyl sales, financial manipulation), the act goes after design features that actually hurt kids, without touching the content of any game or anyone’s speech.