The Kids Online Safety Act, which aims to protect minors online from harm, is pending in the U.S. Senate. (File photo by Sam Ballesteros/Cronkite News)
WASHINGTON – Congress hasn’t passed a law protecting children online since 1998. Advocates are hoping that changes soon.
The Kids Online Safety Act would require tech companies to protect minors from bullying, sexual exploitation, and material that promotes suicide and eating disorders. KOSA would also add privacy protections and limit how minors’ information is collected online.
U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy gave the measure a boost in June when he called for warning labels on social media platforms.
His proposal stemmed from a desire to tackle a mental health crisis among children and teenagers, and he emphasized that a simple disclaimer would only be a part of the solution.
“Congress should shield young people from online harassment, abuse and exploitation and from exposure to extreme violence and sexual content that too often appears in algorithm-driven feeds,” he wrote in a New York Times op-ed.
KOSA has 70 co-sponsors in the Senate, including Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Arizona.
The bill is backed by the American Psychological Association and American Academy of Pediatrics, and is popular among parent advocate groups.
“I do believe there is a heavy, critical need for a ‘duty of care’ and platform accountability when it comes to adolescent social media and online platform use,” said Meritxell Adria, co-founder of the Laloboy Foundation. “In my early teen years, my internal struggles were intensely aggravated by the outside influences of social media.”
The Laloboy Foundation, founded by Adria and her mother Paolla Jordan, is a nonprofit organization that raises awareness on mental health and supports families in need of counseling.
Jordan, from Chandler, lost her son Adrio Romine in 2019 after an adult on Reddit coached him on how to end his life. He’d been Chandler High School’s valedictorian and was a student at Arizona State University.
“It is disgusting. I was angry and just in disbelief that this really happened,” Jordan told ABC15 (KNXV-TV) in 2021.
They began lobbying the Arizona Legislature after discovering the lack of any laws to protect minors from that sort of online interaction. In March 2021, then-Gov. Doug Ducey signed House Bill 2459, which allowed a charge of manslaughter against an adult who advises a minor on suicide methods.
It was the first such state law.
Adria and Jordan both shared support of KOSA.
Adria explained that when she was a teenager, social media accounts promoting self-harm and eating disorders flooded her feed.
“These platforms should have never sustained this type of dangerous content, for any age group, but certainly not for children,” Adria said. “What bothers me most though, is despite all of the advances in technology and the algorithm that these self-harm accounts from 10+ years ago are still up and have not been removed to this day. Where is the accountability? In what world is this OK?”
Jordan said it’s irresponsible to allow children to have “all-age unrestricted social media access,” and adults should act as gatekeepers.
“A child’s technology use and social media access should not be used as a babysitter. As a parent, it is our job to keep our children safe, have conversations about the dangers of social media manipulation and review our children’s devices regularly,” Jordan said. “Technology use is a privilege and not a right.”
Advocates have emphasized the importance of social media guidelines and protections in light of rising mental health concerns.
Online culture puts the lives of young people under a microscope and opens them to bullying even in the privacy of their bedrooms – a challenge previous generations didn’t have to cope with.
“When you’re still developing and trying to figure out who you are and figure out life, it’s very harmful to have the whole world basically looking at what you do,” said Riana Alexander, a Northern Arizona University psychology student and former president of Arizona Students for Mental Health, which she and friends founded while she was a student at Chandler High School.
“There’s been studies that show that the way companies program their apps is so people get addicted to it,” she said.
In 2023, 42 attorneys general, including Arizona’s Kris Mayes, filed lawsuits against Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, for “knowingly designing and deploying harmful features” that “purposefully addict children and teens.”
Natalia Chimbo-Andrade, director of community education for the nonprofit agency Community Bridges in Mesa, shared similar sentiments.
“That’s what’s really scary. Not only do we know youth are a little bit more impulsive and a little bit more reactive to things they are viewing and seeing … but (they) are also very impressionable to things they are viewing and seeing on social media,” she said.
Severe major depression rates among young people increased to 11.5% in 2023 from 10.6% in 2022, according to Mental Health America’s annual report.
Social media can amplify feelings of hopelessness, Chimbo-Andrade said, noting that parents are often unaware of the extent social media can harm their children’s mental health..
She supports warning labels of the sort the surgeon general has advocated for.
“It’s a great teachable moment to have that open and honest conversation with the kiddo and their parent or guardian on the why factor,” she said.
KOSA does have some opponents.
Fight for the Future, an online advocacy nonprofit, has created a Stop KOSA campaign. The organization has received donations from Yelp, DuckDuckGo, Reddit and others.
“Concerns about young people’s harm from Big Tech are valid and real,” the group says on
its website, “but enabling censorship that harms the most marginalized kids is not the answer.”
Instead, the group argues, Congress should “work to protect all internet users from abusive tech companies by passing federal data privacy law and measures that do not threaten online communities that queer and trans youth depend on.”
Organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Freedom of the Press Foundation also oppose KOSA.
“This bill would not keep kids safe, but instead threatens young people’s privacy, limits minors’ access to vital resources, and silences important online conversations for all ages,” the ACLU said in a statement.
The Freedom of the Press Foundation asserts that KOSA could create barriers for student journalists by blocking their access to online information.
“Social media is a great outlet for people to find help and for people to find a community,” Alexander said. “But it’s also very easy to find things that will make you feel awful about yourself.”
