2023 Federal Legislation Proposals to Protect Kids Online

If you know me at all, you know I believe regulating social media companies is part of the answer, when it comes to keeping kids safe online.

Platforms have ignored the safety issues and deadly consequences for our kids for far too long - we know they're not going to choose to change on their own. They need to be required to change, for the mental and physical health of our kids.

But that means we're messing with their revenue model - telling them to stop collecting data on our kids and put our kids' safety and well-being first is going to impact their ability to collect and monetize our kids' information.

Social media companies are going to fight back. (And they are.)

2023 federal legislation to protect children and teens online

2023 is shaping up to be an exciting year for federal legislation to keep kids safe online - I'm keeping my eye on these bills that have bipartisan support and continue to gather momentum.

•  COPPA 2.0  (Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act) offers more privacy for kids and teens online. There's a backstory here. In 1998, Congress passed the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which instituted basic privacy protections, including notice and parental consent requirements that protect users under 13 years old. Looking at it today, it's ancient and doesn't address current privacy issues. Last year Senators Markey and Cassidy proposed COPPA changes but the bill didn't move forward. Now they're proposing COPPA 2.0, which updates and expands privacy laws for kids and teens. Specifically, COPPA 2.0:

  • Prohibits internet companies from collecting personal information from users who are 13 to 16 years old without their consent;

  • Ban targeted advertising to children and teens

  • Expands the requirements to cover all platforms that are “reasonably likely to be used” by children (not just those platforms that are created for kids)

  • Creates an “Eraser Button” for parents and kids by requiring companies to permit users to eliminate personal information from a child or teen

  • Establishes a “Digital Marketing Bill of Rights for Teens” that limits the collection of personal information of teens

  • Establishes a Youth Marketing and Privacy Division at the FTC.

•  KOSA  (The Kids Online Safety Act of 2023) is another bill that got started last year but couldn't quite make it over the finish line. It is sponsored by Senators Blumenthal and Blackburn. KOSA provides kids and parents with some tools, safeguards, and transparency that will help protect kids online. The legislation requires that online platforms put the interests of children first. The Kids Online Safety Act also has some teeth, requiring independent audits and independent research by experts and academic researchers, to make sure platforms are doing the right thing. KOSA:

  • Requires social media platforms to provide minors with options to protect their information, disable addictive product features, and opt out of personalized algorithmic recommendations

  • Requires platforms to enable the strongest safety settings by default

  • Gives parents new controls to help support their children and spot harmful behaviors and provides them (as well as schools) a dedicated channel to report any harms to kids.

  • Creates a "duty of care" for online platforms to prevent and mitigate specific dangers to minors, including promotion of suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse, sexual exploitation, advertisements for certain illegal products (e.g. tobacco and alcohol), and other matters

  • Requires large social media platforms to perform an annual independent audit that assesses the risks to minors, their compliance with this Act, and whether the platform is taking meaningful steps to prevent those harms.

  • Provides academic and nonprofit organizations with access to "black box algorithms", critical datasets from online platforms to foster research regarding harms to the safety and well-being of minors. E

•  The EARN IT Act  (Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act) is another reintroduction from last year. It removes current blanket protections that internet platforms have when they violate of laws related to online child sexual abuse material (CSAM, formerly called child pornography). It's sponsored by Senators Blackburn, Graham and Blumenthal and encourages the tech industry to take online child sexual exploitation seriously.

• The Protecting Kids on Social Media Act would set a minimum age of 13 to use social media apps and would require parental consent for 13 through 17 year-olds.  The bill would also prevent social media companies from feeding content using algorithms to users under the age of 18. It’s another bipartisan effort, with Senators Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), and Katie Britt (R-Ala.) involved. It would:

  • Require social media companies to conduct age verification while maintaining the strictest privacy protections

  • Keep children under 13 off, as the major companies already say they do

  • Prohibit personalized recommendation algorithms for children under 18

  • Require guardian consent for teens under 18 to join

  • Create a pilot government age verification project that platforms may use

  • Provide the FTC and state attorneys general authority to enforce the provisions of the bill.

•  The Clean Slate for Kids Online Act  is a new bill that would give everyone a legal right to demand that internet companies delete all personal information that was collected from or about the person when he or she was a child under age 13. This bill is sponsored by Senators Durbin, Blumenthal and Hirono.

Other bills on the table in 2023:

• The MATURE Act (Making Age-Verification Technology Uniform, Robust, and Effective Act) requires a minimum age requirement of 16 years old for all users on social media platforms. This bill is sponsored by Senator Hawley and would:

  • Prohibit social media companies from offering accounts to users under age 16, and

  • Hold social media companies accountable by creating an audit process and a private right of action.

• The Federal Social Media Research Act would commission a government report on the harm of social media for kids. This bill is sponsored by Senator Hawley and would:

  • Commission a report on the harms of social media, and

  • Fully fund a longitudinal study to track social media’s effects on children over 10 years.

• The Social Media Child Protection Act would make it unlawful for social media platforms to provide access to children under the age of 16. It’s sponsored by Representative Stewart. It also:

  • Requires social media platforms to verify age of users (using methods like ID verification);

  • Requires social media platforms to establish and maintain reasonable procedures to protect the confidentiality, security, and integrity of personal information collected from users and perspective users;

  • Gives the authority to the State to bring a civil action on behalf of its residents;

  • Gives parents a private right of action on behalf of their children;

  • Directs the FTC to prevent any social media platform from violating these regulations including implementing fines for violations. 

Do we need them all?

No. There’s some overlap with a few of these bills and some have been vetted better than others. Now that protecting kids online has become a trendy topic, Congresspeople are eager to propose bills. What we need is for them to co-sponsor two very important, well-vetted bills.

The two must-have bills with wide bipartisan support are KOSA and COPPA.

Will these bills pass in 2023? That's up to us

Tech companies have lots of money and lobbyists. They’re fighting hard against these ideas. These ideas threaten their revenue model and make a new group of users untouchable and protected.

I hope you'll stand with me and encourage your representatives in Congress to do the right thing and put our kids' mental and physical well-being first by passing legislation to protect them online.

Stay informed about legislative progress by joining my community - you’ll get updates every Friday on influencing young people’s relationship to technology, social media trends and regulatory progress.

What about state-level legislation to protect kids online?

Because Congress has been so slow to act nationally, states are taking kids’ online safety laws into their own hands. This will make the landscape complicated in the future and we desperately need federal standards.

Here’s fantastic resource to track state legislation to protect children and teens online. At the time of its compilation in May 2023, there were 144 state bills aimed at protecting children’s safety online.

Some states are tackling a ban on individual apps - TikTok has the most bans proposed.

States are also grappling with ensuring information privacy for minors, changing the age at which to allow access to social media, requiring age verification for accounts, banning design features that cause addiction, filtering explicit and inappropriate content and trying to force social media companies to take some responsibility for the harms they’re causing by holding them liable.