Congress Introduces Online Child-Safety Measures

The House Energy and Commerce Committee will consider a sweeping package of online child-safety bills next week, with a key subcommittee set to examine 19 proposals aimed at protecting children and teens on the internet. The Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade will hold a Dec. 2 hearing titled “Legislative Solutions to Protect Children and Teens Online.”

“For too long, tech companies have failed to adequately protect children and teens from perils online,” subcommittee chair Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., and Energy and Commerce chair Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., said Tuesday in a joint statement. “One week from today, this Committee will begin advancing a suite of online safety bills to address the challenges facing our kids in the digital age.”

Among the bills is a new version of the Kids Online Safety Act, which fell short in the House last year after clearing the Senate with widespread support. KOSA has been championed by parents whose children died after suffering harm online, including cyberbullying, sextortion, and drugs purchased through social media. The updated version, according to The Verge, removes a Senate provision that would have made tech platforms legally responsible for mitigating harms such as eating disorders and depression.

In a new House discussion draft, the duty-of-care standard has been replaced by a requirement that platforms maintain “reasonable policies, practices, and procedures” to address four types of harm, according to The Verge. The hearing will also include amending the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. The bill would raise the age of privacy protections from under 13 to under 17 and would ban targeted advertising to those covered. Another measure, the App Store Accountability Act, mirrors state-level laws requiring age verification at the app-store level and forwarding age signals to developers. A separate bill, the Reducing Exploitative Social Media Exposure for Teens Act, would prohibit social media platforms from allowing anyone under 16 to maintain accounts.

“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,” Bilirakis and Guthrie said.