The House on Monday passed bipartisan legislation designed to protect children online, setting up a clash with the Senate over key policy differences that have stymied progress for years.
The 267-117 vote marked the first time the full House waded into the debate over children’s online safety.
“The need for action has never been clearer,” said Rep. Gus Bilirakis, Florida Republican and one of the lead authors of the bill.
“Nearly half of American teenagers say they are online almost constantly,” he said. “About half spend four or more hours a day on screens for leisure, and 95% have a smartphone in their pocket, placing them in a digital environment that too often prioritizes engagement and profit over safety.”
The House package, called the Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act, or KIDS Act, includes more than a dozen bills that Energy and Commerce Committee lawmakers have worked on for years.
The centerpiece of the package is the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, which requires social media companies to set minors’ accounts to the strongest safety and privacy settings by default, implement more parental controls and alter design features that drive compulsive use.
Other bills included in the package would block private messaging for children younger than 13 and disappearing messaging features for teens younger than 17; implement safeguards for minors interacting with artificial intelligence chatbots and using interactive video game platforms; and establish age verification requirements for pornographic websites.
“This legislation is the most comprehensive, impactful children’s online safety package Congress has considered,” said committee Chairman Brett Guthrie, Kentucky Republican.
Mr. Guthrie said the KIDS Act is “an important milestone, not a finish line” that will give the House leverage in eventual negotiations with the Senate.
The Senate has not advanced a comprehensive package yet this Congress, but it passed a version of KOSA in 2024 that has served as the north star for many lawmakers and advocacy groups involved in the fight against Big Tech.
The House-passed version omits a “duty-of-care” provision that senators say gives teeth to enforce KOSA’s requirements.
The absence of that legal standard means social media companies will not be held accountable for driving “addictive, toxic content through their algorithms and other technology at children,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut Democrat and co-author of the Senate version.
“If you make a toaster and it blows up in somebody’s kitchen because of a defect, you’re liable. If you make a car that drives into a tree because of defective brakes, you can be held responsible in court,” Mr. Blumenthal said. “If you’re Big Tech, you’re off the hook.”
Rep. Kim Schrier, Washington Democrat and a House co-author of KOSA, said she supports the KIDS Act as “a step forward to finally passing comprehensive legislation.” Still, she said, she would like the legislation improved in negotiations with the Senate.
“That’s why I’m continuing to call for duty of care and language that goes further to hold social media companies accountable for the many harms that their platforms are causing, including serious mental health issues like anxiety, depression, addiction, eating disorders, and suicidality,” she said.
The omission of the duty of care was one reason Democrats opposed the version of the KIDS Act approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee in March. They also objected to the language Republicans added to all the bills in the package to preempt states from enacting or enforcing similar laws.
Mr. Guthrie and Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey, the panel’s top Democrat, spent the months after the markup negotiating additional changes and announced a bipartisan deal last Wednesday.
Key to winning Democrats’ support was a change in the preemption language that would ensure all states adhere to the federal standards in the bill at a minimum but allow them to regulate beyond that.
“The KIDS Act is a floor, not a ceiling,” Mr. Pallone said. “The preemption language in the KIDS Act was written with the explicit intent of ensuring that states have the authority to pass and enforce stronger state laws, including those with the duty of care.”
Mr. Pallone also secured the addition of a provision requiring data brokers that sell minors’ data to register with the Federal Trade Commission and pay an annual fee, which he said would bring much-needed transparency to a secretive process.
Parental advocates who lost their children to social-media-fueled suicides and drug overdoses are split over the KIDS Act.
Leaders of the grassroots group Parents RISE oppose the bill because it explicitly says that none of the requirements in the measure may be viewed as imposing a duty of care.
“It doesn’t protect our children. It protects Big Tech,” Parents RISE founder Kristin Bride said. “A bill like the KIDS Act is worse than having no bill at all.”
Another group, Parents for Safe Online Spaces, or ParentsSOS, is supporting the House bill while still seeking to have the duty of care added to any final version negotiated with the Senate.
“This bipartisan package contains meaningful improvements that our members have advocated for, including provisions that protect states’ ability to issue stronger regulations and hold tech companies accountable for the presence of children and teens on their platforms,” the group said in a statement.
ParentsSOS cited the bill’s provisions to limit features that drive compulsive use, ban targeted advertising to minors and prevent contact from unknown adults, as well as an improved “knowledge standard that prevents tech companies from pretending they do not know preteens are on their platforms.”
The knowledge standard, the legal definition that will be used in court to hold social companies accountable to provisions in the bill, has changed through various rewrites of the bill.
The version the House passed Monday includes multiple definitions of knowledge.
In the KOSA section, it means “to know or should have known.”
In another part of the bill, it is defined as “actual knowledge or to have acted in willful disregard.”
The latter is “too weak,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, which has jurisdiction over child safety legislation.
“When you lessen that standard, you can’t prove it” in court, she said.
The standard in the Senate version of KOSA allows for “actual knowledge or knowledge fairly implied on the basis of objective circumstances.”
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