Two landmark bills designed to bolster online safety for children — the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0) — were overwhelmingly approved by the U.S. Senate on Tuesday in bipartisan 91-3 votes. If approved by the House, the legislation would introduce new rules regarding what tech companies can offer to minors and how those firms use and share children’s data. The three senators who voted against the bills cited concerns that the regulations could stifle free speech, open the door to government censorship, and fail to adequately address the greatest threats to children online.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is also among those with concerns, suggesting that it is “a terrible idea to let politicians and bureaucrats decide what people should read and view online,” adding that “anxiety, eating disorders, drug abuse, gambling, tobacco and alcohol use by minors, and the host of other ills that KOSA purports to address all existed well before the Internet.”

“We can’t rely solely on lawsuits and courts to protect us from the growing wave of anti-speech Internet legislation, with KOSA at its forefront,” writes EFF. “We need to let the people making the laws know that the public is becoming aware of their censorship plans — and won’t stand for them.”

The ACLU, LGBT Tech and NetChoice have also expressed concerns that such legislation could limit free expression, lead to aggressive filtering of content, and eventually result in age verification systems.

Meanwhile, proponents view the legislation as a necessary step in combatting the growing problems related to technology and minors. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) said “the Senate keeps its promise to every parent who’s lost a child because of the risks of social media,” and he called on the House to also pass the two bills “as soon as they can,” as reported by The Verge.

KOSA was first introduced in February 2022 by Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) and then reintroduced in May 2023, designed to protect children on social media platforms.

In a speech ahead of Tuesday’s vote, Blumenthal suggested the legislation does not intend to block or censor content: “We’re simply creating an environment that is safe by design,” he said. “And at its core, this bill is a product design bill.” Blumenthal compared KOSA’s online guardrails to earlier approaches to the auto and tobacco industries to “protect consumers against defective products that are designed to make more money and more profits at the risk or expense of injury to people.”

KOSA requires safeguards for children online, “like preventing unknown adults from communicating with kids or viewing their personal data, restricting the ability to share minors’ geolocation data, and letting the accounts of children opt out of personalized recommendations or at least limit recommendation categories,” notes The Verge. “Platforms would also need to default kids’ accounts to the strictest level of privacy settings” and “require a handful of parental control tools.”

While KOSA focuses on the responsibility of social media platforms to mitigate harm to young users, “COPPA 2.0 would add data privacy measures including the ban of targeted advertising to teens and kids online,” reports The Hill.

NBC News offers a snapshot listing the key updates to COPPA 2.0 and the latest provisions of KOSA. President Biden, who called for legislation to protect children’s online safety and privacy in his State of the Union speech, has urged the House to pass the bills so he can sign them “without delay.”

“The last time Congress took meaningful action to protect children and teenagers online was in 1998 — before the ubiquity of social media and smartphones,” Biden said in a statement. “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.”

Related:
These 3 Senators Voted Against Children Online Safety Bills, The Hill, 7/30/24
How the Kids Online Safety Act Was Dragged Into a Political War, The New York Times, 7/30/24
U.S. Senate Passes Two Kids Safety Bills for Tech and Games Platforms, VentureBeat, 7/30/24
The Teens Lobbying Against the Kids Online Safety Act, The Verge, 8/1/24