Congress is struggling for consensus on legislation to protect kids in the digital age after years of legislative work, but at least one bill stands a shot of becoming law this year.
The Senate on Thursday passed a bill to expand a 1998 law that restricts the online collection, use, and disclosure of personal information of children under 13.
The Children and Teens’ Online Privacy and Protection Act, or COPPA 2.0, extends the law’s restrictions to teens ages 13 to 16, unless they provide consent for internet companies to collect their data, and cracks down on loopholes Big Tech has exploited.
The bill passed by unanimous consent, meaning all 100 senators supported it sailing through without a roll-call vote.
The House has made progress in bipartisan negotiations on its own version of COPPA 2.0, leaving hope for a product that can pass, even as lawmakers in the lower chamber remain deadlocked in partisan disputes over other kids’ online safety bills.
Sen. Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts Democrat, authored the initial COPPA law as a House member in 1998 and has been trying since 2011 to modernize it to protect against the rise of social media.
“Only birds tweeted 25 years ago. Tick-tock was the sound that a clock made,” the senator said. “But one thing that has not changed [is] children and teens deserve privacy, they deserve safety.”
COPPA 2.0 bans targeted advertising to minors and “creates an eraser button, allowing children and teens and their parents to delete the personal data that platforms have collected,” Mr. Markey said.
He urged the House to take the unanimously approved Senate bill instead of a “weaker partisan version” he argued would strip key protections from the legislation.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee pulled that partisan version from its Thursday markup of kids’ online safety bills.
Chairman Brett Guthrie, Kentucky Republican, said committee staff made “substantial progress” toward a bipartisan agreement and he would give it time to come to fruition.
The bipartisan goodwill ended there, as committee Republicans advanced three other children’s online-safety bills, two of which Democrats uniformly opposed.
Only Sammy’s Law, named after a child who died of fentanyl poisoning from a counterfeit drug purchased through Snapchat, picked up a handful of Democratic votes. The measure would require platforms to allow for third-party safety software integration that would alert parents when their children encounter harmful content.
A separate bill to require app stores to verify that children are not able to access age-restricted material and give parents more control over downloads passed the panel along party lines.
The committee spent the bulk of the markup debating a bigger package of a dozen online safety bills called the Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act. It advanced on a 28-24, party-line vote.
Mr. Guthrie said Republicans worked with Democrats for months to find an acceptable compromise on the package, but “the absence of a bipartisan consensus cannot be an excuse for inaction.”
Democrats said they still want to achieve a bipartisan solution but can’t agree to a product that falls short of its stated goal to protect kids.
“I really believe that these bills would leave our kids less safe online than they are today,” said New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, the panel’s top Democrat, accusing Republicans of “handing Big Tech a giant gift.”
The bill is unlikely to get to the floor without Democratic support because Republicans can only afford one defection on party-line votes and the bill has more GOP critics than that.
The centerpiece of the package is the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), a bill that Congress has been working to perfect for years.
The version the Energy and the Commerce advanced Thursday was at least the third attempt Republicans have made in the last two years to make the bill more palatable to their conference and to fortify it against likely legal challenges.
House Democrats have opposed each one, lamenting changes that stripped key provisions from the bipartisan product that lawmakers in both chambers championed in 2024.
The Senate combined the original KOSA and COPPA 2.0 that year and passed the package 91-3.
Senate authors made some tweaks to KOSA since, earning endorsements from X and Apple while maintaining bipartisan support.
Rep. Jake Auchincloss, Massachusetts Democrat, called the House bill a “false flag operation by Meta,” which opposes the Senate version. Meta owns Instagram and Facebook.
Tennessee GOP Rep. Diana Harshbarger said it is Democrats who are aiding the social media companies with their opposition.
“They’re pretending it’s for parents, but really it’s because they want to delay any legislation that goes against Big Tech at the expense of your and my children,” she said.
A coalition of advocacy groups, many led by parents who have lost children to online harms, sided with Democrats in a letter asking Energy and Commerce leaders not to advance the legislation as written.
“Every provision we fought for has been stripped or disclaimed,” they wrote. “Every loophole the companies sought has been written in.”
