Senate overwhelmingly passes bill to force social media companies to protect children from harm

The Senate passed a pair of bipartisan bills Tuesday to protect children from potentially harmful social media content, like posts promoting suicidal behavior, eating disorders and substance abuse.

The legislation passed overwhelmingly, 91-3, a strong bipartisan showing that Senate supporters hope will spur the House to act.

“The bipartisan momentum behind these bills is real and we should seize this opportunity to make a law,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat said, urging the House to take up the legislation when the chamber returns in September.

The Senate-passed legislation combined the two bills, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), into one package.

KOSA would require social media companies to enable the strongest privacy settings for kids by default and to disable automated algorithms and features that show addictive products.

The measure would also impose a “duty of care” allowing the Federal Trade Commission to bring enforcement actions against social media companies if they continue using algorithms or other tools to push certain harmful content.

Opponents argue this violates the First Amendment, but the authors of the bill said it’s narrowly targeted to avoid running afoul of the Constitution.

“We’re talking here about stuff that really is almost like incitement, fighting words under the constitutional standard, which don’t have protection under the First Amendment: Speech that is bullying, eating disorders, suicide, self-harm encouragement, addictive in a sense through algorithms that drive content repeatedly in response to expressions of interest,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut Democrat, told The Washington Times.

COPPA would prohibit online platforms from collecting certain information from users 17 or younger, up from the current threshold age of 13.

President Biden, who has called on Congress to pass legislation protecting children online, would sign the legislation if it passes the House.

“Congress has not taken meaningful action to protect children and teenagers online since 1998 — before the ubiquity of social media and the invention of the smartphone,” the Biden administration said in a statement. “It’s long past time to act to keep youth safe online and hold Big Tech accountable for the national experiment they are running on our children for profit.”

The U.S. surgeon general and others say social media is exacerbating a youth mental health crisis.

Mr. Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, the lead sponsors of KOSA, said impacted families have been the driving force behind the bill.

“This moment would have been impossible without the hundreds of parents — including many who have tragically lost their children to social media harms — who have traveled to Washington over the past several years to share their heartbreaking stories and demand action,” Ms. Blackburn said.

The House has already adjourned for its summer recess until Sept. 9, delaying possible action on the legislation until then.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee had been scheduled to mark up its version of KOSA in late June, along with a broader measure to establish data privacy rights and enforcement mechanisms to crack down on violations of those rights. However, the panel canceled the markup because of concerns from House GOP leaders about the broader privacy bill.

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rogers, who chairs the committee, said last week she is still having conversations with leadership about how best to advance the child safety bills and the broader privacy measure.

The three senators who voted against the bill were Sens. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, Mike Lee, Utah Republican, and Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat.

Mr. Paul said the bill is well intended but yet another example of government overreach that could limit free speech or result in other unintended consequences.

“Some people don’t care whether their kid watches beer ads or gambling ads. Some people do,” Mr. Paul told The Times, citing examples of content he believes the bill would regulate. “These decisions really need to be left up to families.”

Mr. Lee said the power of KOSA “could (and most likely would) be used to censor the expression of political, religious, and other viewpoints disfavored by the FTC.” He also said the bill does not stop the exploitation of children in online pornography, which he has authored separate legislation to address.

Mr. Wyden said the bill’s authors have made “constructive” improvements to address censorship concerns but the tweaks “remain insufficient.”

“I fear KOSA could be used to sue services that offer privacy technologies like encryption or anonymity features that kids rely on to communicate securely and privately without being spied on by predators online,” he said.

Rep. Erin Houchin, Indiana Republican, recently talked on her podcast with Ms. McMorris Rogers about the importance of passing KOSA, comparing social media use to other addictive behaviors.

“We have protections for kids not smoking and kids not drinking and kids not engaging in vaping and other things,” Ms. Houchin said. “And social media can be that detrimental to a child’s mental and physical health, especially if they’re staying up all night on their devices.”

Ms. McMorris Rogers said social media companies say they already have ways in which parents can curtail their kids’ social media use, but it’s “not a fair fight” because many children have figured out ways around those controls. KOSA goes to the source of the issue and forces social media companies to change the way they present content to children, she said.

“My biggest fear as a parent really is around tech and social media and how much destructive activity kids are being exposed to,” she said.