WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the U.S. Senate passed the Kid’s Online Safety Act,bipartisan legislation co-sponsored by Senator Thom Tillis that protects children online and holds Big Tech accountable. 

“Our kids deserve to be safe when they go online, and parents must have access to the tools and resources to protect their children from online harm,” said Senator Tillis. “This commonsense legislation protects our children from harm online by ensuring social media companies promote a safe and transparent environment. I’m glad the Senate came together to pass this bipartisan legislation.”

Background: 

The Kids Online Safety Act provides young people and parents with the tools, safeguards, and transparency they need to protect against online harms. The bill requires social media platforms to put the well-being of children first, ensuring an environment that is safe by default. The legislation requires independent audits by experts and academic researchers to ensure that social media platforms are taking meaningful steps to address risks to kids. 

Specifically, The Kids Online Safety Act: 

• Requires that social media platforms 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.
• Gives parents new controls to help support their children and identify harmful behaviors, and provides parents and children with a dedicated channel to report harms to kids to the platform. 
• Creates 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).
• Requires 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. 
• Provides 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

Full text of the bill is available HERE.

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