Senators unveil childrens online safety bill after months of pressure on Silicon Valley

A bipartisan pair of senators on Wednesday unveiled a sweeping bill that aims to give parents more control over their children's time online, following months of congressional scrutiny over the way social media platforms may harm their youngest users.

Co-sponsored by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), the Kids Online Safety Act would require online platforms to provide parents and minors younger than 16 with "easy-to-use" tools to keep them safe, limit screen time and protect their data. It would demand companies create tools to allow parents to track how much time their kids spend on a service, or to opt out of features such as autoplay that might extend time online. Companies would also have to offer parents and minors the ability to modify tech companies' recommendation algorithms, allowing them to limit or ban certain types of content.

"In hearings over the last year, Sen. Blumenthal and I have heard countless stories of physical and emotional damage affecting young users, and Big Tech's unwillingness to change," Blackburn said. "The Kids Online Safety Act will address those harms by setting necessary safety guiderails for online platforms to follow that will require transparency and give parents more peace of mind."

The bill also establishes an obligation for companies to prevent the promotion of self-harm, eating disorders, bullying and the sexual abuse of children. And it would allow the federal government to create a program for researchers to access data from companies so that they can do more research about tech's potential harm of children and teens.

The bill is the result of months of hearings and a congressional investigation into tech companies' handling of children's safety, following documents disclosed by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen last year. Though the documents touched on a variety of topics, internal research examining how Instagram may affect the mental health of teen girls, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, sparked new political will to update safeguards for minors online.

The legislation appears to directly respond to some of the recommendations that Haugen made to lawmakers last year, when she warned of Facebook's tendency to prioritize posts likely to elicit reactions from users. Haugen described the company's algorithms as a black box and called for lawmakers to force greater transparency, in part by facilitating independent research about online platforms.

Senators from both parties appeared uniquely emboldened by the revelations, and they responded with calls for immediate action to keep children safe online. The nation's existing children's online privacy law, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, is more than 20 years old and applies only to children younger than 13. The law -- which is older than Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and many of the other services where children spend time online today -- does not do enough to protect children in the age of social media, policymakers say.

In the absence of action from Congress, companies have responded to public pressure on children's safety, as well as regulations abroad, such as the United Kingdom's Age-Appropriate Design Code. Instagram in December launched a number of features to keep teens safer online, such as reminders to "take a break" and restrictions on what content is algorithmically recommended to teens. TikTok recently expanded its rules against videos that promote disordered eating, and it recently strengthened its policies on content related to suicides.

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