Senators, Parents Pressure House to Pass Kids Online Safety Act

Senators and parents are ramping up pressure on lawmakers in the House of Representatives this week to move forward with legislation aimed at improving children’s digital safety and privacy, as a House committee prepares to discuss the bill on Wednesday.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee), co-author of the Kids Safety Online Act (KOSA), kicked off the effort Monday morning, despite obstacles and opposition to the bill from the Republican Party in the House of Representatives.

The push from Blackburn and other senators is being matched by pressure from parents, some of whom have lost or been severely harmed by social media, many of whom are coming to Capitol Hill this week to meet with lawmakers.

Although the House Energy and Commerce Committee announced Monday night that KOSA will be taken up on Wednesday, it will likely be difficult to get the bill passed in its current form.

A source within House leadership told The Hill on Monday that several Republican members of Congress have expressed concerns about the bill, citing its constitutionality, the “sweeping authority” it gives the Federal Trade Commission to regulate free speech and the potential for censorship of conservative views.

The committee markup comes just ahead of the House’s fall recess, which is expected to last until after the November elections. Supporters of the bill hope the bill’s markup will lead to KOSA being brought up for a House vote later this year.

A GOP member skeptical of the bill told The Hill earlier this month that they hope the committee will consider amendments to address some of the problems the source within the Republican leadership identified.

Blackburn set a tone of urgency Monday morning by releasing a video titled “Why We Need to Pass the Kids Online Safety Act,” in which she spoke with a Tennessee woman whose 17-year-old son, Vaughn-Thomas, took a pill laced with fentanyl that he may have purchased on Snapchat.

The Tennessee Republican described how KOSA would require social media platforms to “design for safety and have a duty of care.” This “duty of care” provision would require platforms to design and implement features to prevent and limit harm to minors, such as content that promotes sexual exploitation, eating disorders or suicide.

KOSA passed the Senate in a 91-3 vote in late July, after years of advocacy about the potential risks of social media and its impact on young people’s mental health. The bill was passed as part of a package that included the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Action Act — called COPPA 2.0 — which would have added data privacy measures, including banning targeted online ads to teens and children.

In a statement Tuesday, Blackburn praised Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris-Rogers (R-Wash.) for moving ahead with Wednesday’s increase.

Earlier on Tuesday, Instagram announced sweeping changes to teen accounts that are intended to improve teen safety and give parents more control over their children’s content and privacy settings.

Blackburn questioned the motive for the announcement, given the timing.

“If anyone needed any more proof that Big Tech has no vested interest in actually protecting our kids, the timing of Instagram’s announcement on the eve of a House markup of the Kids Online Safety Act is it. Like clockwork, the Kids Online Safety Act moves forward and the industry comes up with a new set of self-enforcing guidelines,” she wrote.

The bipartisan support for KOSA is on display in the Senate; Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) also called on the House to bring the legislation to the floor last week. Schumer appeared with teachers, school administrators and survivors of youth sextortion at a press conference in Syracuse last week.

“Put it on the floor of the House and let it be voted on, and I am confident it will pass with the same overwhelming majority that it passed in the Senate,” he said, suggesting that KOSA and COPPA 2.0 “may be the most significant updates to federal laws protecting children with disabilities in decades.

“There is simply no excuse to delay the passage of this legislation,” he said. “We need the House to move forward with this vitally important legislation immediately and without amendment. Any further delay jeopardizes all the hard work these parents are doing. The time to act is now.”

KOSA co-author Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), meanwhile, praised a poll released last week by Issue One’s Council for Responsible Social Media, ParentsSOS and Fairplay.

The poll found that support for KOSA spanned party lines, with 87 percent of Republicans, 88 percent of Democrats and 82 percent of independents in favor. About three-quarters of Republican voters said they would be more likely to vote for a congressional candidate who supported the legislation, Blumenthal’s office noted.

Several advocacy groups are coming to the nation’s capital this week to emphasize the urgency of the bill, Blackburn’s and Blumenthal’s offices confirmed to The Hill.

Josh Grolin, executive director of the nonprofit FairPlay, told The Hill that the organization sent about a dozen parents to Capitol Hill to meet with members of the House of Representatives and recruit more co-sponsors for the bill.

He argued that the tech industry and some libertarian groups have managed to “scare people a bit with really complicated hypotheses” about the bill’s impact, after the Senate’s overwhelming support for KOSA made the industry “unnerved.”

“So, they (the tech industry) are leaning on a lot of members, and members on the right are telling them this is going to be used to suppress conservative speech, and on the left they’re telling them this is going to be used to censor LGBTQ kids, and both of those things couldn’t be further from the truth,” Grolin said.

“These parents are here to remind members of Congress of the real harm that is being done to young people every day,” he added. “And to take it out of the hypothetical and into the real and the tragic, because that’s what they’re experiencing every day.”

NPU President Keri Rodrigues confirmed that her organization will also send parents to Capitol Hill.

“We expect the House of Representatives to take swift action, so we’re going to be visiting every office in the House to make sure they’re heard loud and clear, that parents are speaking out unequivocally on this issue and that we expect them to match the energy of the Senate and get this done,” she said.

The Youth People’s Alliance (YPA), a nonprofit that advocates for young people, has scheduled more than a dozen meetings with lawmakers and staff from both parties, including some executives, Ava Smithing, director of YPA Advocacy, told The Hill.

Smithing stressed the importance of having young representatives present at these meetings in the Capitol.

All YPA representatives are under the age of 24, Smithing said.

“I think it’s very easy for tech companies and people with different interests to say that young people think this or that young people don’t want this, but in reality, the only people who can answer those questions and really lead the change that they want are the young people themselves,” she said.

Emily Brooks contributed.