No, the Kids Online Safety Act did not pass. The Senate approved KOSA 91 to 3 in July 2024, but the House never held a floor vote, and the bill expired when the 118th Congress ended in January 2025. Senators Marsha Blackburn and Richard Blumenthal reintroduced it in the 119th Congress as S.1748 on May 14, 2025, where it was referred to the Senate Commerce Committee and has sat there since.1Congress.gov. S.1748 – 119th Congress (2025-2026): Kids Online Safety Act To become law, KOSA still needs to pass both chambers and be signed by the president.
What Happened in 2024
KOSA was first introduced in 2022 and picked up serious momentum during the 118th Congress as S.1409. After years of hearings on social media’s effects on young people, the Senate passed it in July 2024 bundled with the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act, often called COPPA 2.0.2Congress.gov. S.1409 – 118th Congress (2023-2024): Kids Online Safety Act The 91-to-3 vote was one of the most lopsided bipartisan tallies on any tech legislation in recent memory.
Then it hit the House and stopped. A companion version, H.R.7891, cleared the House Energy and Commerce Committee, but Speaker Mike Johnson declined to schedule a floor vote before the session ended. Under standard congressional rules, any bill that hasn’t completed the full process when a Congress adjourns must start over. KOSA did.
Where the Bill Stands Now
The reintroduced version, S.1748, is largely identical to what the Senate passed in 2024. The main substantive change is a new clause in the duty-of-care section that bars the government from enforcing the law based on the viewpoint of speech expressed by users on a platform.1Congress.gov. S.1748 – 119th Congress (2025-2026): Kids Online Safety Act That addition was written to answer First Amendment criticisms that surfaced during the previous session.
As of mid-2026, the bill remains in the Senate Commerce Committee. It has not received a committee vote, a floor vote, or House consideration in the current Congress. Senate leadership on both sides has again voiced support, but the House’s willingness to move a companion bill is still unresolved.
What KOSA Would Do if It Passes
The centerpiece of KOSA is a “duty of care” that would require covered platforms to use reasonable care in designing their features to prevent and reduce foreseeable harms to minors. The listed harms include eating disorders, substance use, suicidal behaviors, clinically diagnosable depression and anxiety linked to compulsive use, addiction-like usage patterns, severe harassment, sexual exploitation, marketing of drugs, tobacco, cannabis, gambling, and alcohol, and financial harms from deceptive practices.1Congress.gov. S.1748 – 119th Congress (2025-2026): Kids Online Safety Act
The obligation targets design, not individual posts. Platforms would need to look at how their recommendation algorithms, notifications, and feed structures amplify harmful material toward young users, and adjust accordingly.3U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal. Kids Online Safety Act
For any user a platform knows to be a minor, the most protective privacy and safety settings would need to be enabled by default. Personal information like location and contact details would not be publicly visible unless a user (or a parent, for younger children) changed the setting. Minors would also get a prominent option to turn off personalized recommendations entirely and switch to a chronological feed, plus an option to limit which categories of recommendations they receive.
Parents would get tools to view privacy and account settings, restrict in-app purchases, and see and cap the minor’s time on the platform. When those tools are active, the platform has to tell the minor they’re on and what’s been applied.
The bill would apply to “covered platforms” broadly defined as online platforms, video games, messaging apps, and video streaming services that are used or reasonably likely to be used by anyone under 17. Internet service providers, standalone email and text messaging, nonprofits, schools, libraries, and news and sports sites are carved out. Notably, KOSA does not require age verification or age-gating; the obligations kick in when a platform already knows a user is a minor.
Enforcement would run through the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general, with civil penalties tied to the FTC Act’s existing structure.4Federal Trade Commission. FTC Publishes Inflation-Adjusted Civil Penalty Amounts for 2025 The bill does not create a private right of action, so families could not sue platforms directly.
Why the Bill Has Stalled
The biggest obstacle to KOSA becoming law is a persistent First Amendment argument. Civil liberties groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and industry groups such as NetChoice have argued that the duty of care, by tying platform liability to specific categories of content-related harm, functions as a content-based restriction on speech. Courts treat those as presumptively unconstitutional and apply the strictest level of review.
Opponents make several specific arguments. They say the listed harm categories are broad enough that platforms will over-remove lawful speech on topics like mental health, substance use, and bullying to reduce their exposure. They warn that letting state attorneys general enforce the law invites viewpoint-driven pressure that varies by which party controls a given state. And they argue that even without an explicit age-verification mandate, platforms will build verification systems anyway to identify who counts as a minor, burdening adult users in the process.
This concern isn’t hypothetical. Federal courts have already blocked state-level youth online safety laws in Arkansas, Ohio, and Mississippi on First Amendment grounds, finding that age-verification requirements and content restrictions aimed at minors weren’t narrowly tailored enough to survive constitutional review. Supporters counter that the new viewpoint-neutrality clause in S.1748 was written precisely to address this line of attack. Whether it’s enough to survive a legal challenge is a heavily contested question and part of why House leadership has been hesitant to move the bill.
COPPA 2.0 Is Moving With It
KOSA has consistently traveled alongside COPPA 2.0, which updates the 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. Where KOSA regulates platform design, COPPA 2.0 restricts data collection: it would ban targeted advertising directed at users under 17 and require consent before companies collect personal information from minors.5U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation. Senate Overwhelmingly Passes Children’s Online Privacy Legislation The two bills passed together in the 2024 Senate vote and are expected to keep moving as a package.
What to Watch
Three things will determine whether KOSA finally passes. First, whether the Senate Commerce Committee schedules a markup and reports S.1748 to the floor. Second, whether House leadership brings a companion bill up for a vote, which was the choke point last time. Third, how federal courts continue to rule on state youth online safety laws, since those decisions shape the constitutional risk calculation for any federal version. Until the bill moves out of committee, its practical status is unchanged from the day it was reintroduced: pending, not law.