The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation advanced four kids online safety bills to the floor on Wednesday.
Committee leaders hope to package the bills, and potentially a few others, so that the Senate can take up one big bipartisan package to protect kids in the digital age.
The House already passed its own kids online safety package. Differences between the two chambers’ approaches will require further negotiation to resolve before any measure could become law.
The centerpiece of both the Senate and House efforts is a bill called the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, that would require 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.
It cleared the Senate Commerce Committee by voice vote, which Chairman Ted Cruz said reflects the panel’s unanimous support.
“I’m confident we will pass it on the Senate floor, and then we will continue the hard work and negotiations with the House to get it over the finish line and to the president’s desk,” said Mr. Cruz, Texas Republican. “I believe we’ll get there, but there’s more work to be done.”
The Senate first passed KOSA in 2024 on a 91-3 vote, but the measure stalled in the House.
This session, the House acted first, passing its own version of KOSA in June as part of a broader package of bills called the Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act, or KIDS Act. The House vote was 267-117.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican who coauthored KOSA with Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, said the Senate “cannot and will not accept” the House version.
“It is toothless, and it is a very pale imitation of the Senate version, and therefore it is a pale imitation of Big Tech accountability,” Ms. Blackburn said.
The major difference between the bills is that the Senate version includes a duty-of-care provision providing a legal standard that ensures social media companies can be held liable for failing to adjust their algorithms and design features to prevent specific harms to minors.
Ms. Blackburn thanked parental advocates who’ve lost children to online harms and are backing the Senate version for their help in the yearslong process. She also expressed confidence that 2026 will be the year the measure becomes law.
“We’re sending a message to Big Tech that the era of Big Tech profiting off of our children is over,” she said. “We have arrived at a time where we are going to pass this. We are going to get it signed into law, and we will do it in spite of all the money that [Big Tech] spent opposing this legislation.”
The Senate version of KOSA has changed since it was first passed last Congress, and some social media companies, such as X and Snap, have endorsed the measure as a result.
Exactly what form KOSA takes when it is brought to the Senate floor remains to be seen, but Ms. Blackburn said it would likely include the three other bills the committee advanced by voice vote on Wednesday.
The CHATBOT Act would require AI companies to establish family accounts for parents to manage their children’s use of chatbots. Family accounts would be mandatory for children under 13 and optional for teens, although the latter would have the most protective design settings set by default regardless of whether they sign up for a family or individual account.
“It would also require AI companies to make reasonable efforts at stopping chatbots from presenting obscene material or facilitating suicidal ideation,” said Mr. Cruz, a lead author of the bill, referring to artificial intelligence. “AI companies would be required to refer suicidal children and teens to the appropriate crisis resources, and when a child or teen is connected to a family account, to notify their parents.”
The Youth AI Privacy Act would limit chatbots’ use of minors’ data to respond to questions asked, ensuring companies cannot use it for advertising or profiling.
It also caps memory retention for minor accounts at 30 days, a provision that became a point of contention during the markup.
Mr. Cruz said having a default period makes sense, but parents should also have the choice to opt out of automatic deletion of data or choose a different memory retention period. He offered an amendment to that effect.
Sen. Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts Democrat and lead author of the Youth AI Privacy Act, opposed Mr. Cruz’s amendment.
“Without a meaningful outer limit, the companies will have every incentive to push families towards the longest possible setting by marketing it as more convenient, more personalized or necessary for the chatbot to truly know the child,” Mr. Markey said. “The 30-day limit is a reasonable guardrail against effectively having a permanent memory for minors.”
Mr. Cruz’s amendment was adopted along party lines, and the bill still advanced by voice vote.
The fourth bill to advance via voice vote was the Children’s Intelligence Toy Safety Act.
It requires the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Product Safety Commission to create a joint action plan with recommendations for legislation and/or regulations providing federal standards and guidelines for the sale and marketing of AI-enabled toys.
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