The House on June 29 passed legislation to require new online safety protections for children, a sign of growing momentum in Washington to address a widespread concern among US parents even as the measure sets up a clash with senators seeking stronger safeguards.
The House-passed legislation stops short of demands in the Senate to impose a legal requirement on tech companies, such as Meta Platforms Inc, TikTok Inc, and Snap Inc, to "exercise reasonable care” to prevent harms to minors. Republican and Democratic senators derided the House effort as inadequate.
The House’s so-called Kids Act, passed 267-117, requires online platforms to limit minors’ access to sexual material, including through mandatory age verification for pornography websites, and provide parental controls on social media and online video game platforms. Artificial intelligence chatbots would also have to disclose that they are not human to users who identify themselves as minors and provide suicide prevention resources to children who show signs they are considering suicide.
It would also require social media companies to create default settings for minors that limit addictive design features and provide parents with tools to manage their child’s privacy settings.
The congressional action, after years of deadlock on the issue, comes as social media companies are under immense public scrutiny over concerns that their products are harming children and their mental health through addictive algorithms and dangerous content.
"While no single bill will solve every challenge facing families online, this legislation represents a significant and long-overdue step forward in establishing meaningful safeguards,” Representative Brett Guthrie, a Kentucky Republican, said. "It is an important milestone, not a finish line.”
A California jury in March found Meta Platforms Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google liable for contributing to a young woman’s mental health struggles in a landmark case that underscored the companies’ potential multibillion-dollar exposure from lawsuits claiming social media platforms are designed to addict young users.
Digital rights activists have opposed the Kids Act, arguing it could require tech companies to collect excessive amounts of information about its users to verify their ages. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which supports free speech online, said the bill could drive social media companies to collect users driver’s licenses or passports or use privacy-violating age estimation systems.
In the Senate, Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn is championing a proposal that goes further than the House bill. It includes a "duty of care” provision that would hold tech companies legally accountable for promoting harmful content to minors. That would include material facilitating eating disorders, substance abuse, and sexual exploitation.
"Without a duty of care, Big Tech companies will maintain the status quo of putting profit before the safety of our children,” Blackburn said in a statement. "We need a strong federal standard in place that will ensure Big Tech companies can’t design their products to addict, exploit, and harm America’s children.”
A coalition of children’s online safety groups sent a letter to House leaders urging them to reject the Kids Act, in part because it does not include a similar provision.
"It pains us that, given how hard we have fought for a strong federal solution to online child protection and for a strong bill to move to the House floor, the Kids Act is the bill the House is championing,” the groups, including Design It For Us and the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, wrote in the letter.
Blackburn has been negotiating directly with the White House on legislation that would include the Senate version of the children’s online safety bill and age verification requirements.
That package would include a sweetener for tech companies: preemption of state AI laws. The White House tried and failed several times last year to convince Congress to pass a federal moratorium on state AI laws.
Guthrie said the House will negotiate details when the Senate passes their version of the bill later this year.
"The Senate wants to tell us what to do, but they need to do it on their side, and then we’ll work together,” Guthrie said after the vote on June 29. – Bloomberg
Those suffering from problems can reach out to the Mental Health Psychosocial Support Service at 03-2935 9935 or 014-322 3392; Talian Kasih at 15999 or 019-261 5999 on WhatsApp; Jakim’s (Department of Islamic Development Malaysia) family, social and community care centre at 0111-959 8214 on WhatsApp; and Befrienders Kuala Lumpur at 03-7627 2929 or go to befrienders.org.my/centre-in-malaysia for a full list of numbers nationwide and operating hours, or email sam@befrienders.org.my.
