As Millennials become parents and Generation Z grows up with their smartphones, Congress is under massive pressure to act. anythingto protect children and young people from online harm and hold Silicon Valley accountable.
Since Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s infamous Senate testimony in 2018, determined parents have met with lawmakers from both parties and appeared at contentious hearings where the CEOs of major tech companies brought photos of children who have died after being cyberbullied and exposed to other dangers on popular apps. Meanwhile, research appears to confirm society’s worst fears about the impact of endless scrolling on mental health, especially among young people.
The debate was emotional and the stakes were high, but lawmakers failed to create meaningful regulation of social media and internet companies until last month. Then, with overwhelming bipartisan support, the Senate passed the controversial Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). The bill would empower federal regulators to take legal action against apps and websites they believe cause mental health problems in children and teens. But digital rights groups warn that letting bureaucrats decide what content is appropriate is a dangerous step toward illegal censorship. The problems KOSA is designed to address — anxiety, depression, drug use and eating disorders, for example — were widespread even before the internet and won’t be solved by filtering content recommendations.
In fact, some of the “yes” votes for KOSA in the Senate were likely cast by lawmakers who simply didn’t want to vote against a bill that included the words “children,” “online” and “safety” in an election year. Lawmakers from both parties have spoken out against KOSA in recent weeks, including Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, a leading voice for tech accountability and one of the few Democrats to vote against the bill. Because of the controversy, KOSA is now expected to stall in the House, where the Republican majority has struggled to pass even basic legislation.
Despite numerous changes to the bill’s language, KOSA continues to face fierce opposition from LGBTQ and digital rights groups, who take exception to the bill’s so-called “duty of care” provision on content recommendations, which makes internet companies responsible for designing their products to prevent common threats to minors, such as “suicide,” “gambling,” and “sexual exploitation.”
Communities of queer and transgender youth have mobilized online to protest against KOSA, as the legislation becomes increasingly entangled in long-standing culture war debates about sex education and the visibility of queer people in schools.
Digital rights groups argue that the provision would encourage tech companies to overcorrect and respond to threats from politicians by censoring reproductive and mental health resources, particularly for trans youth and others who rely on the internet to get support and information and to cope with the marginalization of their identities. Across the internet, communities of queer and trans youth have mobilized to protest KOSA as the legislation has become increasingly embroiled in long-running culture war debates about sex education and queer visibility in schools.
“The changes I, LGBTQ+ activists, parents, student activists, civil rights organizations and others have fought for over the past two years have made it less likely that the bill can be used as a tool by MAGA extremists to fight against legal and important information for teens,” Wyden recently wrote on social media. “While these improvements are constructive, they remain insufficient.”
Wyden and LGBTQ rights groups have reason to worry. Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican who worked with Democrats on KOSA, said in 2023 that the bill could be used to censor content and protect young people from “indoctrination” and, as she called it, “transgender.” After Democrats updated the bill earlier this year to appease LGBTQ groups, Republicans, fed online misinformation about queer people, began to view KOSA as part of a liberal conspiracy to promote gender nonconformity that doesn’t exist.
Some parts of KOSA are uncontroversial, such as the rules requiring apps to automatically provide the highest level of safety to users under 18 and to prevent incentives and warnings designed to encourage them to keep scrolling. It is KOSA’s vague “duty of care” provision in content recommendations that has frustrated lawmakers and drawn opposition from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other groups.
Exactly what constitutes “wrong” things to recommend to children online is not a settled question, as the far-right’s online outrage over queer and transgender youth disturbingly illustrates.
“At its core, KOSA is still an internet censorship bill that will harm the very communities it is supposed to protect,” Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the ACLU, said in a statement after Democrats proposed further changes to KOSA in February. “The First Amendment guarantees everyone, including children, the right to access information without censorship.”
The bill would allow the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to sue companies that expose children to harmful material that could affect their mental health through vaguely defined “design features.” KOSA supporters say the bill is “content neutral” and would not restrict what children can search for in an app or website, but opponents say that’s impossible. Fearing lawsuits, internet companies will simply filter certain material out of recommended content. If partisans run the FTC, they could target specific platforms with lawsuits, as part of a broader attack on LGBTQ people and content, for example. KOSA is designed to target material that could cause symptoms like “depression,” but parents and researchers disagree on what exactly it is about social media that makes kids depressed.
Supporters of the bill point to a search bar exemption designed to ensure teens can access what they’re looking for. But that exemption is contradicted by other language in the bill, said Evan Greer, director of the digital rights group Fight for the Future, which has mobilized youth activists against KOSA.
“As currently drafted, #KOSA’s duty of care includes recommending content,” Greer wrote on social media on Monday. “It effectively says, ‘Your algorithm cannot recommend content that we believe will make children depressed.’ That is not content neutral. We proposed wording that would be. It was rejected.”
“How does a company know exactly what a user is looking for? It makes a guess,” Greer continued. “That means they algorithmically recommend content in search results and could be liable if an FTC decides they recommended the wrong thing.”
Exactly what is “wrong” to recommend to children online is not a settled question, as the far-right’s online furor over queer and trans youth disturbingly demonstrates. Lawmakers and parents largely agree that something must be done to rein in powerful social media companies that target young people and hoover up their data. But agreement on how to do this under the First Amendment remains elusive.
Greer says lawmakers should focus on regulations that protect everyone from companies that want to exploit our data and screen time, rather than setting up a two-tier system with age verification and content filters for those under 18. Greer points to the American Innovation and Choice Online and Open App Markets Act, which take an antitrust approach to regulating giant social media companies, or the American Privacy Rights Act, which would regulate data collection without infringing on First Amendment rights.
“That’s the problem with trying to regulate the endorsement of speech on social media,” Greer said. “The First Amendment makes it almost impossible, whether you like it or not.”
Defend the truth with us before it’s too late
The future of journalism is uncertain and the consequences of its loss are too grave to ignore. To ensure Truth stay fearless, tough and 100% independent. We need to raise $50,000 in the next nine days. Every dollar raised goes directly toward the costs of producing trustworthy news.
Please give what you can – because by supporting us with a tax-deductible donation, you are not only preserving a news source, you are helping to preserve what is left of our democracy.
