Senate Poised to Pass Bills to Protect Children’s Safety and Privacy Online

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President Joe Biden has urged Congress to send the bills to his desk ‘without delay.’

The Senate is scheduled to pass new legislation today to protect children’s safety and privacy online. Last Thursday, senators voted 86-1 to end the debate on the two bills and advance them to the floor, setting them up on a “glide path to final passage,” according to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

The new bills update a decades-old law to safeguard children’s safety on the internet. The rules for the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA) took effect in 2000, four years before Facebook was created.
One of the bills, COPPA 2.0, expands the age limit for protected minors from 13 to 16 and requires social media platforms to obtain consent from users aged 13 to 16 before collecting their personal information. The bill also bans ads targeting children and teens.
The other bill, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), addresses tech companies’ algorithms for keeping users consuming content. It requires the companies to allow minors to limit the category of recommendations or opt out of personalized recommendation systems that facilitate infinite scrolling.
In addition, KOSA requires social media companies to take measures to prevent the spread of harmful content related to suicide, eating disorders, bullying, and drugs.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a co-sponsor of KOSA, said more needed to be done, but the bill “goes in the right direction.”

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As the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law on the Senate Judiciary Committee, he has urged Meta CEO Mark Zuckerburg to compensate parents who lost their children over online harm.

“We need to allow parents to get their kids’ data back, but it is a step forward to say you can’t track and you can’t target,” he told The Epoch Times on Monday. “It’s a step forward to get parents some enforceable rights.”

Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), a member of the Senate Commerce Committee and another KOSA co-sponsor, said she was “very concerned about the disregard that large mediums have for the welfare of children.”

“They know that their algorithms are used to target the very young—meaning under age 13 and another bill 13 to 16—with advertising that diminishes the mental health of young people,” she told The Epoch Times.

“They know that, and they’re not dealing with it. And so, when they won’t deal with it, we have to protect children.”

During the procedural vote last week, Sen. Rand Paul (R-K.Y.) was the only one who voted “no” to advance the bills.

He objected to KOSA and said it was too broad. He said it would create a Kids Online Safety Council that he considered “speech police.” He said KOSA would cause “fear of liability, fear of lawsuits” and lead to self-censorship by social media platforms, which in turn would stifle freedom of speech.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) speaks during the weekly Senate presser in the U.S. Capitol building in Washington on July 9, 2024.(Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) speaks during the weekly Senate presser in the U.S. Capitol building in Washington on July 9, 2024.(Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

Mr. Schumer, though, hailed the bills as a “groundbreaking step toward ensuring our kids’ online safety.”

“It’s not an exaggeration to say these bills will be the most important updates in decades to federal laws that protect kids on the Internet. And it’s a very good first step,” he said last week.

President Joe Biden has stated his support for the legislative effort. Last Thursday, the White House said that the bills would “finally advance bold actions to hold Big Tech accountable” and urged Congress to send them to the president’s desk “without delay.”
Just three days before that, the Biden administration’s new inter-agency task force on the same subject issued its first report, with recommendations for families, the tech industry, and policymakers for young people’s safety and health.

Although the report doesn’t name any bills, it recommends “enacting bipartisan federal legislation to protect youth health, safety, and privacy online.” A key recommendation for families is creating a family media plan, including setting screen-free zones and times, and often discussing social media experiences.

About 95 percent of teenagers and 40 percent of children between eight and 12 years of age use some form of social media, according to the report.

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory last year that excessive use of social media might lead to anxiety and depression. In June, he called for a warning label on social media platforms, similar to the warning on tobacco products.
Three of four voters support the social media warning label, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released June 26. If enacted, KOSA would authorize the warning Dr. Murthy proposed.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee still needs to advance the bills in the lower chamber.

Joseph Lord contributed to this article.

Original News Source Link – Epoch Times

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