Senator Promises Committee Action on Kids Online Safety Act After Parents Rally

Senate Commerce Chairman Ted Cruz told parents and advocacy groups who rallied at the Capitol on Tuesday for passage of the Kids Online Safety Act that his committee would advance that bill and others designed to protect children in the digital space.

” Mr. Cruz did not provide a time frame for the committee to mark up the legislation. The committee will consider four bills, including one he has sponsored to prevent social media platforms from hosting children under 13. A Commerce Committee spokesperson said a date for the markup has not yet been set.

Tuesday’s rally was led by mothers who have lost children to suicide or drug overdoses related to online activity. It was timed near Mother’s Day to highlight their call for enactment of the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA. “KOSA is the most effective, thoroughly vetted and bipartisan federal online safety bill for children ever written,” said Cheryl Brown.

Brown’s daughter McKenna died by suicide at age 16 after relentless cyberbullying on social media, including an incident in which her peers shared private text messages that outed her as a rape survivor. She said KOSA’s duty of care provision would hold social media platforms liable for purposely designing products that promote addictive use and harm children.

This means companies like Meta, Snap, TikTok and others would be legally required to mitigate harms, such as cyberbullying, sexual exploitation, illegal drug use, eating disorders and suicide. The parental advocates are focused on pushing the Senate to act on KOSA because it is that chamber’s version of the bill, led by Sens.

Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee Republican, and Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut Democrat, that they support.

One of the bills the senator named, the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy and Protection Act, or COPPA 2.0, already passed the Senate by unanimous consent earlier this year. Lawmakers have been discussing an updated version that can also clear the House.

COPPA 2.0 expands a 1998 law that restricts the online collection, use, and disclosure of children’s personal information, applying the limits to teenagers ages 13 to 16 unless they provide consent for internet companies to collect their data. It also adds new data minimization rules and seeks to crack down on loopholes that Big Tech may exploit to continue abusive data collection.

In the previous Congress, the Senate combined KOSA and COPPA 2.0 into one package. The bill, however, has stalled in the House.