In May 2023, Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) of Mississippi announced that she has cosponsored comprehensive legislation to protect children online and hold Big Tech accountable.
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The Kids Online Safety Act of 2023 (S.1409) aims to provide young people and parents with the tools, safeguards, and transparency they need to protect themselves from online harms, while also requiring social media platforms to actively implement safety measures.
The bipartisan legislation was written by U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), and is based on findings of tech giants’ repeated failures to protect children on their platforms, as well as the online dangers faced by youth and children.
Hyde-Smith is one of the original 32 cosponsors.
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The Kids Online Safety Act of 2023 (S.1409), in summary, would:
- Require social media platforms to give minors the ability to protect their personal information, disable addictive product features, and opt out of algorithmic recommendations.
- Provide parents with new controls to help support their children and identify harmful behaviors, as well as a dedicated channel for parents and children to report harms to the platform.
- Make social media platforms accountable for preventing and mitigating harms to minors, such as the promotion of suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse, sexual exploitation, and illegal products for minors (e.g. gambling and alcohol).
- Require social media platforms to conduct an annual independent audit to assess minors’ risks, compliance with this legislation, and whether the platform is taking meaningful steps to prevent those harms.
- Allow academic and public interest organizations access to critical datasets from social media platforms in order to foster research on threats to minors’ safety and well-being.
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