# Kids Online Safety Act Summary
The Kids Online Safety Act would establish comprehensive protections for children and teenagers using online platforms, social media, and video games. The bill applies primarily to large "high-impact" platforms with over $2.5 billion in annual revenue or 150 million monthly active users, though many requirements extend to all online platforms with child users.
The law requires covered platforms to exercise reasonable care in preventing specific harms to minors, including mental health disorders like anxiety and depression, compulsive use patterns, bullying, sexual exploitation, and exposure to drug and alcohol marketing. Platforms must provide minors with readily accessible safeguards to limit communications, reduce addictive design features like infinite scrolling and auto-play, and control recommendation algorithms. For children under 13, platforms must obtain parental consent and enable parental controls by default. Large platforms must publish annual public reports assessing risks to children and describing their prevention measures, with content audited by independent third parties.
The bill establishes an 18-month implementation timeline and creates a Kids Online Safety Council to advise on implementation. It also directs federal agencies to conduct research on social media's effects on youth mental health, study age verification technologies, and issue guidance for schools and platforms. A separate "Filter Bubble Transparency" provision requires platforms to allow users to opt out of personalized algorithms and see content in chronological order. The Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general would enforce the law, with violations treated as unfair or deceptive practices. States can enact stronger protections, but this law preempts weaker state rules.
Take Action
Your position
Add a comment
to comment on this bill.
Annotate the text
Highlight any passage on the Summary or Full Text tab to attach a note. Annotations appear on the Annotations tab.