Kaine Cosponsors Bipartisan Bill to Protect Children Online
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Tim Kaine cosponsored the Kids Online Safety Act, bipartisan legislation to strengthen online safety standards for minors and hold social media platforms accountable. The Kids Online Safety Act would provide young people and parents with the tools, safeguards, and transparency they need to protect against online harms. The bill would require social media platforms to put the well-being of children first, helping ensure an environment that is safe by default. The legislation would also require independent audits by experts and academic researchers to help ensure that social media platforms are taking meaningful steps to address risks to kids.
“We’ve seen tragic stories and studies about how social media can lead to bullying, higher rates of anxiety and depression, and other harms, and we need to make reasonable reforms to keep kids safer,” said Kaine. “This bipartisan bill is a critical step to protecting children, improving transparency, and helping ensure social media companies take action to improve safeguards.”
The Kids Online Safety Act would:
- Require social media platforms to provide minors with options to protect their information, disable addictive product features, and opt out of algorithmic recommendations. Platforms would be required to enable the strongest settings by default.
- Provide parents and children with a dedicated channel to report harms to kids—such as anxiety, depression, physical violence, online bullying, or sexual exploitation—to the platform.
- Create a responsibility for social media platforms to prevent and mitigate harms to minors, such as promotion of suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse, sexual exploitation, and unlawful products for minors (e.g. gambling and alcohol).
- Require social media platforms to perform an annual independent audit that assesses the risks to minors, their compliance with this legislation, and whether the platform is taking meaningful steps to prevent those harms.
- Provide academic and public interest organizations with access to critical datasets from social media platforms to foster research regarding harms to the safety and well-being of minors.
The Kids Online Safety Act is led by Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). It is cosponsored by U.S. Senators Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Joni Ernst (R-IA), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Steve Daines (R-MT), Gary Peters (D-MI), Marco Rubio (R-FL), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), Chris Murphy (D-CT), Todd Young (R-IN), Chris Coons (D-DE), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Brian Schatz (D-HI), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Mark R. Warner (D-VA), Roger Marshall (R-KS), Peter Welch (D-VT), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), Dick Durbin (D-IL), James E. Risch (R-ID), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Katie Britt (R-AL), Bob Casey (D-PA), Rick Scott (R-FL), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), John Cornyn (R-TX), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Roger F. Wicker (R-MS), Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Joe Manchin (D-WV), James Lankford (R-OK), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Tom Carper (D-DE), Ben Cardin (D-MD), and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH). The bill was first introduced in February 2022 and unanimously passed out of the Commerce Committee in July 2022.
The Kids Online Safety Act is supported by hundreds of advocacy and technology groups, including Common Sense Media, American Psychological Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Compass, Eating Disorders Coalition, Fairplay, Mental Health America, and Digital Progress Institute.
Full text of the bill is available here. A summary of the bill is available here.
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