Senate passes the most significant child online safety bills in decades

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a pair of children’s online safety bills — a rare sign of bipartisan cooperation in the middle of a volatile and acrimonious presidential campaign.

But the legislation won’t make it to President Joe Biden’s desk anytime soon. The House has just begun its six-week summer recess and won’t return to Washington until Sept. 9. And while he's supportive of the “purpose” of the bills, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said he’s still reviewing the legislation and hasn’t scheduled a vote.

The two bills in the package — known as the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, and the Children’s and Teens Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA 2.0 — represent the most significant congressional action in decades to regulate social media’s impact on children and teens.

The lopsided vote was 91-3, with Senate Finance Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and GOP Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah, as the only no votes.

“This is why we came here — to get things done and do it in a bipartisan way that literally will save lives,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., a former state attorney general, who teamed with Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., on authoring KOSA, said in an interview last week.

“What we’re doing is giving parents and kids the tools to disconnect from harmful content, bullying, eating disorders, stuff that really hurts them, and also impose a duty of care on Big Tech that for too long, has said ‘trust us’ and betrayed that trust,” Blumenthal continued. “And now, they’re going to have to comply with a law that imposes a duty on them to mitigate or prevent harm.”

KOSA would require social media companies to provide better protections for users under age 17. It also would require