KEY VOTE: “YES” on the Kids Online Safety Act (S. 1409) and the Children & Teens' Online Privacy Protection Act (S. 1418)

Data shows that American children are more anxious, lonely, depressed, and suicidal because of the amount of time they spend on their phones and social media. Social media companies are fully aware of the destructive impact their products have on children and teens, yet they continue to redouble their efforts to entrap the next generation in Big Tech’s addictive grip. Sadly, the U.S. has done very little to curtail the harm tech companies cause to our children. The current tools for users to report Big Tech’s abuses and hold them accountable are difficult to find and navigate. And worse, tech companies are unresponsive or fail to resolve the abuse. The motion to concur includes two key pieces of legislation to protect America’s children online: the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) (S. 1409) and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0) (S. 1418).

The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) fills a vacuum in protecting America’s children in three key areas: providing platform accountability, increasing transparency, and empowering users in the form of parental controls and user safeguards. KOSA requires platforms to take reasonable measures to design and operate their products to prevent and mitigate anxiety, depression, eating disorders, violence, online bullying, and sexual exploitation, among other toxic effects on children. KOSA also requires platforms to share its policies and practices related to user data in a clear, conspicuous, and easy-to-understand manner. Furthermore, KOSA requires platforms to allow users to opt out of a personalized-recommendation system and limit categories of recommendations. It also requires platforms to provide accessible and easy-to-use tools that allow kids and their parents to limit notifications, who can contact them, the amount of time they can spend on the platforms, and restrict the sharing of their geolocation. Critically, under this bill, parents have the final say in their child’s privacy and account settings.

The bill holds Big Tech accountable to these standards by allowing the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and states’ attorneys general offices to pursue tech platforms that fail to provide parents with options to protect their child’s information, disable addictive product features, and opt out of algorithmic recommendations. It also creates a “duty of care” for social media platforms to prevent and mitigate harms to minors, such as content that promotes self-harm, suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse, and sexual exploitation.

The Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0) would strengthen protections for teenagers’ personal data. Currently, 93% of teens use social media, which collects and uses personal data on its users without requirements for consent and opting out of certain practices.[1] COPPA 2.0 updates existing law passed in 1998, before social media. It increases the age of protected minors from 12 to 16 and prohibits the collection of data on children for unauthorized purposes (including targeted advertising), requires online notices of data collection and user rights, provides teens and parents of children (under 13) with the right to request deletion or correction of personal information, and changes the knowledge standard from actual knowledge to actual or fairly implied knowledge that a user is a minor.

Under current law, social media platforms evade compliance by writing in their policy that users under age 13 are prohibited from using their services, however they do very little to enforce the policy. Nearly 70% of children under age 13 use social media.[2] COPPA 2.0 better protects America’s children by increasing the age of those covered by the law’s protections to 16 and puts social media platforms on the hook for compliance.

Together, KOSA and COPPA 2.0 are major steps toward reining in Big Tech and empowering parents