After passing the Senate with much fanfare, a pair of federal privacy bills intended to protect children online has ground to a halt in the House. These bills would update the decades-old existing privacy law covering children by expanding the age of children it covers (from under 13 to under 18). They would also create a broad new range of rules relating to social platform use by minors. Many critics of the bills feel the latter measures would lead to censorship by social media platform companies trying to stay out of regulatory trouble regarding the kinds of materials children can access (and how they can interact with such behind content) online.
WHY IT MATTERS
The US continues to lag behind much of the world in matters of privacy. Congress has tried and failed for years to pass either a national privacy law or meaningful updates to the laws protecting children. Multiple states are taking this as a signal to pass their own legislation, creating a form of compliance Whack-a-Mole for many companies with an online presence. With only a short time remaining in the legislative year, and this being a contentious election year, the prospects for a bill are dimming by the day.
A House leadership aide told The Hill that concerns from across the House GOP about the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) — which passed the Senate 91-3 last month as part of a package that also included provisions such as the Children's Online Privacy Protection Action Act (COPPA 2.0) — suggest it "cannot be brought in its current form."
"It could lead to censorship of conservative speech, such as pro-life views, is almost certainly unconstitutional and grants sweeping new authority to unelected bureaucrats at the FTC," the leadership aide said[.]
The bill, which would create regulations to govern the kinds of features tech and social media companies could offer to minors online, is the result of years of advocacy and growing public awareness around the potential addictiveness of social media and its effects on youth mental health.
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