Dive Brief:
- The House passed the Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act in a 267-117 vote on Monday evening. The proposal would require additional safeguards for children and teens online, including an update to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act that would expand protections currently available to children up to the age of 12 to teens up to age 17.
- Under the bill’s latest version of COPPA, websites would be banned from using targeted advertising on children and teens. Critics of the KIDS Act have pointed out that the legislation leaves out a “duty of care” measure, which would require tech companies to design their online platforms to be safe by default.
- Ahead of the House vote, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said in a statement that the KIDS Act — and particularly its lack of a duty of care provision — would weaken proposed protections that the Senate previously passed in its Kids Online Safety Act in a 91-3 vote in 2024 but it did not become law.
Dive Insight:
The concerns around the KIDS Act come as large social media companies such as Meta, Snap and OpenAI are being challenged in courts over the alleged harm their online products have caused to children and teens.
In a June 26 letter to House leadership, a coalition of youth online safety organizations called for lawmakers to prevent the KIDS Act from going to the full House floor for a vote. The duty of care provision, the coalition wrote, is crucial to ensuring that tech companies design their platforms in a way that does not foster mental health challenges and the sexual or financial exploitation of young people.
“The duty of care is critical because the harm to young people is built into the design of these products, not stemming from content,” the coalition said. “Stripping the duty of care does not lighten a regulatory burden; it removes the most important obligation requiring these products to be designed safely in the first place.”
Groups in the coalition, guided by youth-led online safety nonprofit Design It For Us, include the American Federation of Teachers, Common Sense Media, InnovateEDU and the National Parents Union.
Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., who helped negotiate the bipartisan agreement on the latest version of the KIDS Act, said in a Monday statement that the legislation explicitly allows states to enact and enforce stronger online protections for children and teens.
Pallone, the ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, previously expressed concerns that a former version of the KIDS Act would make progress more difficult for lawsuits seeking to hold tech companies accountable for the dangers their products have caused to young people.
Other Democrats have said that the previous Republican-sponsored version of the bill’s preemption language would have prohibited states from implementing their own stronger online protections.
The adjustment to the current KIDS Act’s preemption language, Pallone said, will enable states to pass their own online safety laws, including duty of care measures.
“I want to be clear – the KIDS Act is a floor, not the ceiling,” Pallone said. “It is also intended to ensure that ongoing lawsuits against social media companies, chatbot providers, and social gaming companies brought by state attorneys general and attorneys on behalf of parents and kids can continue, including those based on a duty of care and consumer protection laws.”
Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, released the updated version of the KIDS Act alongside Pallone just a week before the bill went to a full vote on the House floor. Guthrie said in a June 22 statement that the latest iteration of the KIDS Act “would establish the strongest protections to date” for children and teens online.
“The bipartisan KIDS Act addresses the proven harms from online platforms ranging from social media to gaming to artificial intelligence and pornography, establishes new privacy protections for children and teens, and gives parents the necessary tools to fight back against Big Tech,” Guthrie said.
