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WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate on Tuesday passed legislation aimed at protecting children online, which could be the first change since the slow 1990s to the rules that govern companies that interact with minors online.
Senators approved a package of two bills in 91-3 votesa rare bipartisan victory in the bitterly divided body, despite vocal and passionate opposition from civil rights and LGBTQ groups who say the measures would give the government the power to subjectively censor content.
The three “no” votes were cast by Mike Lee of Utah, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ron Wyden of Oregon. Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, who has COVID and is isolating at his home in Braddock, did not vote.
If passed by the House of Representatives, the legislative package would require Producers of platforms popular with children and newborn people will have to comply with novel rules on advertising, algorithms and the collection of personal data.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, expressed interest in “working to find consensus in the House.”
President Joe Biden issued a statement Tuesday calling the Senate vote a “crucial bipartisan step forward” and saying the bill aligns with measures he championed in his first State of the Union address.
“The evidence is undeniable that social media and other online platforms are contributing to a mental health crisis among youth. Right now, our children are being subjected to a Wild West online environment, and our current laws and regulations are inadequate to stop it. Now is the time to act,” Biden said, adding that tech companies must be “accountable for the national experiment they are conducting on our children for profit.”
Families Asked for Federal Aid
The package contains two bills that are related to each other: The Act on the Protection of Privacy of Children and Young People on the Internetthe main purpose of which is to regulate the collection of personal data and Children’s Safety on the Internet Acta bill that has come under criticism from outside groups.
Bipartisan group of senators points to years With interrogation and meetings with families affected by the tragedy — including those whose children struggled with eating disorders and committed suicide — as motivation to submit a proposal.
Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, one of the original sponsors of the Kids Online Safety Act, said the bill is “a safety bill, a duty of care bill that gives kids and parents a toolkit to protect themselves.”
“We’re sending a message to big tech companies: Kids are not your product, kids are not your source of profit, and we’re going to protect them in the virtual space,” Blackburn, a Republican, said at a news conference after the vote.
Blackburn, along with Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, led the effort to develop legislation called the Kids Online Safety Act.
Sens. Bob Casey (R-Pennsylvania) called legislation “This is an important step towards protecting our children from the growing threats on the Internet.”
Fetterman said in a statement Tuesday that he would like to be in Washington to vote for the bill and urged the House of Representatives to pass it as quickly as possible.
“We all know the positives of the internet, but social media can seriously harm mental health. I’ve experienced this firsthand and have been vocal about it,” he said. “I’m especially proud to have worked to improve this legislation so that far-right attorneys general or federal appointees can’t use it as a weapon to censor both content that supports LGBTQ+ youth and content that provides information about reproductive health care.”
Senator Ed Markey, who championed the last protections passed by Congress in the slow 1990s, said, “In 1998, it was just birds chirping, the gram was a measure of weight, so we need to update the law.”
The Massachusetts Democrat joined Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana in co-sponsoring the Children and Teens Online Privacy Protection Act.
Markey compared addictive social media products to tobacco industry products of previous decades and cited public health warnings that attribute an increasing number of mental health problems among children to these platforms.
“So we need to give parents, teens and kids the tools to protect themselves, and that’s my message to my colleagues in the House. We can’t avoid this historic moment,” Markey said at a news conference.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer praised the Senate’s passage of the bill and said the parents of the affected teens are “the reason we succeeded today.”
“I’ve heard horror stories: kids, teenagers, completely normal, then some algorithm randomly catches them online and shortly thereafter they commit suicide,” the New York Democrat said in a statement. “Imagine being a parent and living with that.”
New rules for platforms
The two original bills, combined into one bill, respectively set out “duty of care” principles requiring platform creators to consider broad categories of mental health when designing and operating their products, as well as a ban on using personal data for targeted marketing.
The legislation would also require platforms to create an “easy-to-understand privacy dashboard” that details how personal information about minors is collected, used and protected.
Other measures would include a ban on hidden algorithms, mechanisms to allow minors or parents to delete data, parental controls to limit financial transactions, and annual public reporting by platforms on “reasonably foreseeable” harms to children and teens and the actions they take to prevent them.
Enforcement
If the novel rules become law, enforcement would be handled by the Federal Trade Commission, and any civil actions would be brought in U.S. district courts in individual states, with prior notice to the FTC.
The law defines online platforms as public websites, social media applications, video games, messaging applications or video streaming services that are “used or are likely to be used by a minor.”
Snap, the company behind the popular Snapchat platform, issued a statement in which it particularly praised the Senate’s passage of the Children’s Online Safety Act.
“The safety and well-being of young people on Snapchat is a top priority,” a Snap spokesperson said in a statement to States Newsroom. “That’s why Snap has long supported the Kids Online Safety Act. We applaud Senators Blackburn, Blumenthal and the approximately 70 other co-sponsors of this important legislation for their leadership and commitment to protecting the privacy and safety of young people.”
Opponents see this as a “dangerous” measure
A coalition of organizations defending the First Amendment rights, privacy and interests of LGBTQ minors urged the House of Representatives to vote against the bill, criticizing it as “blatantly unconstitutional.”
Evan Greer, director of the technology policy group Fight For the Future, also criticized the bill, calling it “dangerous and misguided” and “overly broad.”
The coalition largely challenges the “duty of care” provision in the Children’s Online Safety Act, which requires companies to “prevent and mitigate” harm related to anxiety, depression, eating disorders, substance apply disorders and suicidal behavior.
During a joint virtual news conference held by the groups ahead of the Senate vote, Greer described the provision as “a blank check to censor any content the administration might deem harmful to children.”
“In practice, what this means is that, for example, the Trump administration’s FTC will be able to dictate what types of content platforms can recommend or even show to younger users,” Greer said, referring to Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump.
Jenna Leventoff, senior policy adviser at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the Kids Online Safety Act is “nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to censor information that some people find inappropriate.”
“If passed, KOSA could lead to the removal of information about health care, gender, identity, politics and other issues from social media. And kids are seeing that censorship will make them less safe, not more,” Leventoff said. “As one student recently told me, they don’t get sex education in school, and if information about sex is being removed from the internet because platforms are concerned about liability for hosting it, how else are they going to learn about sex?”
Teenagers in opposition
The ACLU gathered about 300 teens on Capitol Hill on Thursday to lobby against the bill.
Dara Adkinson of TransOhio called the legislation “truly terrifying.”
Adkinson questioned whether state and federal authorities could argue that content about climate change or the country’s history of slavery is disturbing and therefore should be regulated.
Referring to content about transgender youth, Adkinson said, “We know there are people who wish we didn’t exist, and the lack of visibility of the kinds of resources that can be found online is the first step for many of those people.”
Greer said the coalition is concerned about the role of “big tech” in society. Supporters would back a “heavily modified” version of the Kids Online Safety Act that focuses on regulating business practices, including targeted ads or videos that auto-play and encourage continuous, addictive scrolling.
Greer said their organization remains neutral on legislation aimed at protecting children’s privacy, but would like to see comprehensive legislation that protects both minors and adults.
“Censorship and privacy don’t go together and shouldn’t go together,” Greer said.
Update: This article was updated at 4:48 p.m. on July 30, 2024 to include a statement from Senator John Fetterman.
