House decides to wait until Trump administration to pass child online safety legislation

Parental advocates of legislation to protect children from social media algorithms came back to Capitol Hill on Monday to pressure House lawmakers to pass the bill before the congressional session ends next week.

However, their hopes were quickly dashed after House Speaker Mike Johnson issued a statement late Monday saying he wanted to wait until President-elect Donald Trump is in the White House to perfect and advance the legislation.

“I have been and continue to be open to working on a solution that protects kids online while continuing to protect the free speech rights of all Americans. It’s essential to get this issue right and House Republicans look forward to working with the Trump Administration to get the right bill into law,” the Louisiana Republican said.

Mr. Johnson elaborated on Tuesday, telling reporters that House Republicans still have concerns about the bill’s requirements being “overbroad” and that they could lead to “further censorship by the government of valid conservative voices, for example.” But he said he is “very optimistic” they can work through those concerns and pass it early next year. 

Mr. Johnson’s comments come days after the lead Senate authors of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) announced changes to the bill incorporating feedback from leaders of X and other stakeholders who wanted more guardrails to prevent censorship.

The update led to key endorsements from X owner Elon Musk, X CEO Linda Yaccarino and Donald Trump Jr., which advocates had hoped would help encourage the House to finally pass the bill.

The Senate approved KOSA and a related bill called the Children and Teens Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) in a combined 91-3 vote in July after years of behind-the-scenes work.

“What we want to make clear is that this bill does not hamper anyone from searching for content … any kind of content. But what it does is it keeps the platforms from feeding it to them unsolicited,” activist Joann Bogard told The Washington Times in an interview Monday, before Mr. Johnson’s statement came out.

Ms. Bogard of Evansville, Indiana, has been advocating for Congress to pass KOSA after her 15-year-old son Mason died after trying a choking challenge video that YouTube algorithms promoted to him.

Mason was more into the outdoors — fishing, camping and hiking — than social media but did like to watch how-to videos on YouTube, she said.

“I had all the protections put in place, watchdog apps, checked his devices, had the hard conversations, all the things that I thought I was ahead of the game and that he would be fine,” Ms. Bogard said. “There was nothing in his search history, so it was unsolicited, which is often the case with a lot of these harms, whether it’s eating-disorder content, whatever it is.”

KOSA requires social media companies to turn off data-driven algorithms for minors and ensure their accounts default to the strongest safety and privacy settings.

“Parents aren’t looking for a pass, a free pass from parenting,” Ms. Bogard said. “They’re looking for help. They’re looking for an even playing field. Everyone has a role to play.”

KOSA also includes a “duty of care” standard that would require online companies to implement design standards that protect minors from specific harms and permit the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to bring enforcement actions against companies that fail to do so.

The duty of care standard is especially important to Maurine Molak of San Antonio. Her 16-year-old son David died by suicide in 2016 after “months of relentless and devastating cyberbullying” through Instagram and messaging apps.

Those threats came after a year in which he developed a social media and online gaming addiction while recovering from a back injury and sidelined from his previous normal activities, such as basketball.

“He was sneaking around using his devices when he wasn’t supposed to be, and they were supposed to be locked up in the kitchen. He would get angry and aggressive when we would try to get him to stop,” Ms. Molak said. “And then there, towards the end, he started stealing from us in order to purchase virtual assets to increase his player power in these games.”

The cyberbullying that soon followed “was like a match on a huge bonfire that just exploded at that period of time in his life,” she said.

Requiring social media companies to implement design standards that protect minors from algorithms and rewards that contribute to compulsive use could have helped in David’s case, Ms. Molak said.

Ms. Molak said this week is her 14th visit to Capitol Hill to lobby for KOSA, and Ms. Bogard, who counts this as at least her 10th visit, planned to focus on lobbying House Republicans all week.

They both helped enact laws in their respective states named in their child’s honor but won’t rest until a federal law is in place.

The advocates hoped to convince lawmakers to attach KOSA to the year-end government funding package Congress needs to pass by next Friday to avert a shutdown.

While negotiations over that package are ongoing, Mr. Johnson’s opposition to advancing the bill this year all but kills any chances of KOSA making it in.

Ms. Molak and Ms. Bogard said they’ve tried to secure meetings with Mr. Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, another Louisiana Republican who has expressed concerns about the bill, but have been unsuccessful so far.

Mr. Scalise told The Times in September that many House Republicans worried the bill gives too much power to the executive branch and could lead to the Biden administration abusing that power to censor political speech by conservatives.

His comments came despite changes the House Energy and Commerce Committee made before reporting its versions of KOSA and COPPA to the floor that sought to address those concerns and others.

The House panel watered down the duty of care language to require only that social media companies guard against physical violence and harassment.  Democrats on the committee said they preferred the Senate-passed bill, which included a broader duty to protect against other harms that lead to anxiety, depression, suicidal behavior, substance abuse and eating disorders.

Sens. Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee Republican, and Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut Democrat, the bill’s authors, are still advocating for their version but agreed to changes over the weekend.

Mr. Musk, who has become a close confidant of the incoming president, backed the Senate update, which was negotiated in part by Ms. Yaccarino. She announced X’s collaboration with the Senate authors “to further protect freedom of speech while maintaining safety for minors online” on Saturday, prompting the younger Mr. Trump to endorse the bill.  

The changes clarify that the bill would not censor, limit or remove content from the internet and that it cannot be used to penalize users for their viewpoints. The update also specifies that the FTC or state attorney generals would not have any power to bring lawsuits over content or speech.

“These changes should eliminate once and for all the false narrative that this bill would be weaponized by unelected bureaucrats to censor Americans,” Ms. Blackburn and Mr. Blumenthal said, reiterating X’s call to pass KOSA by the end of the year.

“It is clear that this legislation has overwhelming support from Congress,” the bipartisan duo said.

The Senate changes also narrowed the duty of care’s application but did not go as far in that regard as the House panel did.

The latest language keeps anxiety and depressive disorders in the duty of care responsibility but only “when such conditions have objectively verifiable and clinically diagnosable symptoms and are related to compulsive usage.”

It also provides more guidance to social media platforms about their obligations under the duty of care and how enforcers should assess whether they took the required steps to protect young users.

• Alex Miller contributed to this story.