PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) — The World Wide Web is an ocean of information, but without a lifeline, kids may find themselves drowning.
That’s why Virginia Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner want to put children first with new legislation. The U.S. Senate took steps this week to pass the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act and the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), cosponsored by Kaine and Warner.
The bills had strong bipartisan support.
Kaine and Warner believe KOSA will provide kids and parents tools to protect against online threats.
“If we had put guardrails in place a decade ago on social media we may not have the level of mental health challenges that so many of our young people have today,” Warner said.
According to a Harvard study, social media companies generated $11 billion in revenue from advertising directed at children and teens in 2022. Nearly $2 billion of that was targeted towards kids 12 and under.
“This is a really good bill for kids that will ban advertisements directed toward children and require that social media platforms give youngsters options to avoid some of the harmful information and activity that goes on online,” Kaine said.
In addition, the bill would require social media platforms to enable stronger privacy settings on accounts created by minors. It would also provide parents and kids with a dedicated channel to report harms like anxiety, depression, physical violence, online bullying or sexual exploitation to the platform.
Senator Warner says these bills will help to keep working towards a future where more Americans are safe from dark patterns online. It’s also one of the reasons he believes there needs to be guardrails on AI as well.
“If we put guardrails on AI, we may not inherit those same challenges a decade from now the way we did with social media.”
The second bill, The Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act, would ban online companies from collecting information from teen users without their consent.
Senator Kaine also hopes to attach something else to the bill about anti-cell phone use policies in schools.
“The bill that I have with Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) on studying schools and anti cell phone use policies and spreading the research from the schools that do so people can embrace best practices around social media usage during the school day, We’re still looking to see if we can get that attached but even if we don’t this is a really good bill for kids” said Kaine.
The Senate passed the bills Thursday and now they head to the House.