U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) cosponsored the Kids Online Safety Act, which would provide kids and parents with the tools, safeguards, and transparency they need to protect against threats to children’s health and wellbeing online:

“Every day, our children see content online about suicide, eating disorders, and drug use, and the statistics on teen suicide and mental health paint an alarming picture for the next generation,” said Sen. Cornyn. “This bill strikes the right balance between First Amendment rights and safety, and I’m proud the Senate has finally taken an important step to help keep America’s children safe online.”

Background:

The Kids Online Safety Act would provide kids and parents with the tools, safeguards, and transparency they need to protect against threats to children’s health and wellbeing online by:

• Requiring social media platforms to provide minors with options to protect their information, disable addictive product features, and opt out of personalized algorithmic recommendations;
• Giving parents new tools to help support their children and providing them a dedicated channel to report any harm to kids to those platforms;
• Creating a duty for online platforms to prevent and mitigate specific dangers to minors in their product designs, including suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse, sexual exploitation, and advertisements for certain illegal products;
• Requiring large social media platforms to perform an annual independent audit that assesses the risks to minors and whether the platform is taking meaningful steps to prevent those harms;
• And fostering research regarding harms to the online safety of minors by requiring the National Academies to study the impact of social media on youth.

The Kids Online Safety Act, led by Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), was cosponsored by more than 70 Senators last Congress and is endorsed by more than 250 organizations and associations representing mental health experts, nurses, parents’ groups, young people, consumer advocates, faith groups, tech experts, and others, including RAINN, Rights 4 Girls, and the National Center on Sexual Exploitation.

Sen. Cornyn has previously held events in Houston and Dallas to draw attention to this legislation and the importance of protecting Texas children online. This legislation passed the Senate last Congress but did not receive a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives.