WASHINGTON (TNND) — A House committee is planning to take up a slate of legislation aimed at protecting kids and their privacy online once lawmakers return from the holiday recess in another push to safeguard the nation’s youth from the dangers of social media and new artificial intelligence tools.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee scheduled a hearing next week where lawmakers will consider 19 pieces of legislation, including a new version of the Kids Online Safety Act that sailed through the Senate last year before stalling out in the House.
A chorus of lawmakers are hoping to rein in an industry they say have failed to act without intervention from Congress that has created a dangerous environment for the country’s youth.
“For too long, tech companies have failed to adequately protect children and teens from perils online,” committee chair Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., and Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., chair of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade, said in a statement. “Parents and lawmakers both agree on the importance of enacting meaningful protections that can stand the test of time, so we look forward to this important first step.”
There is widespread and bipartisan interest in addressing the growing list of dangers posed to children online in Congress, but lawmakers have had a hard a hard time reaching consensus over exactly what regulations should look like amid free speech concerns and industry pushback. The proliferation of AI and its increasing importance to the future of the U.S. economy has thrown another wrench into deliberations as lawmakers are hesitant to install regulations that could curtail its development.
Included in the 19 bills that will be up for debate include measures on app store regulations, limitations for chatbots, raising the minimum age to be on social media, design of the platforms and video games. The most high-profile bill included in the package is a revised version of KOSA with changes designed to overcome GOP objections to the original text and potential legal hurdles.
The updated version of KOSA removes “duty of care” language, which would have made companies legally responsible for reducing harms from their services. Critics of the proposal argued the provision could result in several free speech issues. It has been replaced with a requirement that platforms have “reasonable policies, practices, and procedures” to deal with issues like threats of violence, sexual exploitation, scams or distribution or sale of drugs, tobacco or gambling.
Another major piece of legislation in the slate is a bill requiring app stores to verify the ages of users, a proposal that has been enacted in a handful of states but also run into court challenges and raised questions about how to implement it and how to safeguard the storage personal data. Age verification is an issue that has also divided the tech industry, where app stores argue developers are better suited to deal with the issue, while social media companies say app stores are the best route.
Other bills in the package would ban children under 16 from having social media accounts, limit their access to disappearing message features like Snapchat’s, and restrict companies’ abilities to collect data and perform market-based research on kids.
What bills will make it through both chambers of Congress is uncertain as lawmakers have taken different approaches to what the best route to regulation is. Removing the “duty of care” provision from KOSA could pose a hurdle as it already has a filibuster-proof level of support in the Senate if lawmakers take the same position as the vote on the bill last year.
Scrutiny of social media companies has ramped up as researchers have found harms to children’s mental health from using their platforms along with whistleblowers and court documents accusing them of knowingly concealing the issues for the sake of keeping younger users on the platforms.
The most recent example came in a court filing unsealed this week that alleged top executives at Meta compared Instagram to a drug and worked to obscure the platform’s harmful effects despite knowing of them. Meta has denied the claims and said they are cherry-picked quotes that do not present a clear picture of its work to protect children.
Meta is one of the most heavily scrutinized social media companies over its handling of online safety for youth amid a series of whistleblowers and other investigations accusing the company of failing to address what it knew were problems being caused by its platforms.
The company has tried to soothe concerns by tightening policies around underage users and the introduction of Teen Accounts, though the moves have not made much progress with parent groups or lawmakers seeking to regulate Big Tech.
“Meta’s exploitation of children and adults is by design. It’s time to pass the Kids Online Safety Act and stand up for the next generation. This is what happens when Congress fails to act,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., a leading advocate of KOSA, wrote on X.