On February 16, 2022, Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) introduced the comprehensive Kids Online Safety Act to enhance the safety of children’s online activity.
APA Services worked with both offices last fall to help ensure they were informed by the current psychological science surrounding the impact of social media on children, including focusing on how to reduce harms specifically from Instagram and the science of how young brains are impacted by social media. APA Services hopes this and other legislation is put forward for consideration by all of Congress soon.
“The Kids Online Safety Act is an important first step in reining in the harms caused to children by social media platforms,” said APA CEO Arthur C. Evans Jr., PhD. “Enacting measures that curtail harmful practices while authorizing research to understand additional impacts is a thoughtful strategy. APA supports the leadership and bipartisan efforts of Senators Blackburn and Blumenthal on this measure and looks forward to working with Congress to address this important issue.”
This legislation serves as the next step in a months-long focus by Congress on this area. The act aims to achieve five main goals:
- Place responsibility on social media companies to prevent and mitigate harms to minors resulting from use of their platforms.
- Require companies to develop and deploy new parental controls that provide education and options to parents and children to further identify and report harmful behaviors on social media.
- Change the default security and privacy settings for young users, including developing new protections that further shield minors from harmful product features.
- Require social media companies to conduct and distribute an annual independent audit that demonstrates the risks to minors on their platform, along with compliance with the comprehensive Kids Online Safety Act.
- Increase access for public and academic researchers to receive data from companies to conduct research into the impacts of the platforms on safety and wellbeing of minors.
The full text of the bill is available online (PDF, 68KB), along with a section-by-section summary (PDF, 441KB).
For more information, contact Corbin Evans.