After months of debate, the Kids Online Safety Act and Children and Teens Online Privacy Protection Act have passed the Senate. With both bills now on their way to the House for further consideration, it is important to consider whether such legislation is likely to have its intended effect.
The Kids Online Safety Act, better known as KOSA, would place a duty of care for minors on social media companies. The hope is that such a requirement will reduce the chances of a minor accidentally encountering harmful content and crackdown on social media features seen as manipulative, such as push notifications and endless scrolling. KOSA is being considered simultaneously with a new privacy reform bill for minors called the Children and Teens Online Privacy Protection Act. Together, these bills promise to make the biggest change to U.S. privacy protection for minors since the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of 1998.
The Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act, otherwise known as COPPA 2.0, would extend privacy protections — including requiring verifiable parental consent for the collection of personal data — to teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17. It would also lower the standard to enforce the law from one where it can be reasonably assumed that minors are using social media as opposed to the previous standard of actual knowledge.
COPPA 2.0 would not require age verification, which was a major concern with previous proposals. However, it would impose requirements on social media companies and other platforms whose services were never intended for minors. For instance, it would ban targeted advertising toward minors and prohibit companies from collecting data without their consent.
These bills, specifically KOSA, are being promoted as a way to address the growing mental illness crisis among young people, with Sen. Richard Blumenthal arguing that social media is largely responsible. The problem with this argument, however, is that the science is far from settled on the matter, with researchers debating whether the relationship between teenage social media use and poor mental health is anything other than correlation. This fact should give any policymaker pause as to whether they want to lend their support to a bill like KOSA.
KOSA, in its current form, does address some of the bill’s previous shortcomings such as revising the duty of care provision to avoid misuse and ordering studies on age verification and social media’s effect on teenage mental health. However, it does so while introducing regulations that may present their own problems.
If adopted, KOSA and COPPA 2.0 would significantly change the way social media platforms operate. With these bills, legislators hope to change how young people’s data are collected and used and how content is marketed to them in the name of protecting their mental health. While an admirable goal, it is far from clear whether these bills will have the desired effect. Lawmakers would be wise to consider this before lending their support for KOSA and COPPA 2.0.
