Countless American families have lost children due to online harms, and advocates will travel to Washington, D.C., this week to encourage Congress to pass the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, before the year ends.
The legislation is the first significant attempt to protect children and teenagers online in more than two decades.
Children and teens who spend time on Discord, TikTok, X and other platforms without guardrails may experience anxiety, depression, bullying or sexual exploitation and may lead children to have suicidal thoughts or actions.
Representatives from Parents for Safe Online Spaces will meet with policymakers and hold a rally on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.
The event will feature a holiday-themed visual to symbolize the toll online harms have taken on children across the country.
Since KOSA’s introduction in Congress two years ago, countless American families have lost children to online harms. Families and advocates will speak to the urgency of passing KOSA, emphasizing that Congress must include the legislation in any end-of-year packages.
ParentsSOS members have made more than 10 trips to Washington to advocate for KOSA meeting with many leaders of Congress.
KOSA passed on the Senate floor 91-3 in July.
“I’m glad the Senate passed this bipartisan bill — which includes legislation I’ve cosponsored—to help protect children from the negative impacts of social media, which can lead to higher rates of bullying, anxiety, depression and other harms,” said U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) in July after the vote. “This bill would increase transparency, accountability and oversight to help ensure we’re keeping kids safe online, by limiting addictive product features, strengthening privacy settings, banning targeted ads and requiring additional reporting mechanisms.”
The House has not taken any action on the measure.
Breaking down the Kids Online Safety Act
The KOSA legislation would:
- Ban advertisements targeted toward children.
- Require social media platforms to provide minors with options to protect their information, disable addictive product features and opt out of algorithmic recommendations.
- Require social media platforms to enable the strongest privacy settings by default on accounts created by minors.
- Provide parents and children with a dedicated channel to report harms to kids—such as anxiety, depression, physical violence, online bullying, or sexual exploitation — to the platform.
- Create 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.
- Require 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.
- Provide 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.
If you or someone you know needs support now, call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org
For local mental health resources, visit AFP’s Project Mental Health page.
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For more coverage, search “mental health” on Augusta Free Press.
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Crystal Graham
