What Is the Child Online Safety Act and How Does It Work?

The Kids Online Safety Act is a proposed federal bill that would require social media companies, video games, messaging apps, and streaming services likely to be used by people under 17 to redesign their products with young users in mind. It has passed the Senate once, in 2024, but stalled in the House. It was reintroduced in May 2025 as Senate Bill 1748 in the 119th Congress and has not been signed into law.¹ Because the text could still change before any final vote, everything below reflects the version now before Congress.

Which Platforms and Users Would Be Covered

The bill applies broadly. A “covered platform” is any online platform, video game, messaging application, or video streaming service that connects to the internet and is used, or reasonably likely to be used, by a minor.² That definition pulls in most social networks, content-sharing sites, and multiplayer games. Email providers and certain news and sports websites are carved out.³

Two age groups matter under the bill. A “minor” is anyone under 17, and a “child” is anyone under 13.⁴ Some protections, such as parental tools being on by default, apply automatically to children under 13 and work differently for teens. The broader safety obligations apply to every user under 17.

The Duty of Care

The centerpiece of the bill is a legal duty of care. Covered platforms would have to exercise reasonable care in how they design features that minors use, working to prevent and reduce a specific list of harms:⁴

Eating disorders, substance use disorders, and suicidal behaviors.
Depression and anxiety tied to compulsive, addiction-like patterns of use.
Physical violence and online harassment severe enough to affect a major life activity.
Sexual exploitation or abuse of minors.
Content that promotes or markets narcotics, tobacco, cannabis, gambling, or alcohol to minors.
Unfair, deceptive, or predatory marketing practices aimed at minors.

The duty is only triggered when a reasonable person would agree the harm was foreseeable and that a design feature contributed to it. The language is aimed at algorithms, recommendation engines, and interface choices that push harmful content toward young users, rather than at every piece of bad content that exists on a service. How courts would actually apply “reasonable care” is one of the bill’s most debated open questions.

Default Safety Settings and Parental Tools

For any user a platform knows is a minor, every available safeguard would have to default to its most protective setting.⁴ A minor’s account would start locked down rather than wide open. Safeguards must include ways to limit who can contact the minor and to restrict design features that encourage compulsive use. Minors also need a readily accessible option to limit time spent on the platform, and the bill specifically requires that these controls be easy to find and easy to operate.

Parents get a separate toolkit. For children under 13, parental tools would be on by default, and parents could view and change privacy and account settings directly. For minors ages 13 through 16, parents could see settings but have less direct control. The tools have to include time-spent metrics, time limits, and restrictions on purchases or financial transactions.⁵ When parental controls are active, the minor must be clearly notified about what settings are in place.

Does the Bill Require Age Verification?

No. This is a common misunderstanding. The bill states that nothing in it should be read to require a platform to collect personal data about a user’s age beyond what it already gathers, or to build an age verification system.⁴

Instead, the Secretary of Commerce, working with the FCC and FTC, would study the most technologically feasible ways to verify age at the device or operating system level, weighing privacy risks, data minimization, disability accessibility, and effects on competition. The bill’s obligations are tied to what a platform actually knows: once a platform knows a user is a minor, the protections apply. Platforms are not required to go looking.

Transparency Reports

Large platforms face annual public reporting. Any covered platform averaging more than 10 million monthly active users in the United States that predominantly hosts user-generated content would have to publish a yearly report based on an independent, third-party audit.⁴ Smaller platforms are not subject to this requirement.

The report has to cover, among other things, the number of users known to be minors, how much time those users spend on the platform, foreseeable risks of harm to minors, how the platform’s design extends minor engagement, and how personal data is collected and processed for recommendation systems.

Who Enforces the Law and What the Penalties Are

The FTC is the primary enforcer. A violation of the act would be treated as a violation of an FTC rule against unfair or deceptive practices, unlocking the commission’s full enforcement toolkit.⁴ Civil penalties under the FTC Act are currently set at $53,088 per violation, and because each affected user can count as a separate violation, penalties against a major platform could climb into the hundreds of millions.⁶

State attorneys general could also bring civil actions on behalf of residents, but only for violations of the safeguard, parental tool, and transparency provisions. They cannot enforce the duty of care. They can seek injunctions, compel compliance, and recover damages or restitution distributed under state law.⁴ The bill does not create a private right of action. Individual parents and minors cannot sue platforms directly under the act; enforcement runs through the FTC or a state attorney general.

How It Fits With COPPA

The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, on the books since 1998, focuses on the privacy of children under 13 and restricts how sites collect personal information from them without parental consent. The Kids Online Safety Act does something different. It targets platform design and its effects on a wider age group, everyone under 17. The two laws are meant to work together.

The current version aligns several definitions with COPPA’s, and parental notification requirements have been reworked to fit COPPA’s consent framework. The bill also includes a preemption provision. It overrides state laws that directly conflict with its requirements but leaves states free to pass stronger protections for minors. It is designed as a floor, not a ceiling.

First Amendment Objections

The bill has drawn sharp opposition from civil liberties groups. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the ACLU, and the Center for Democracy and Technology have argued that the duty of care would push platforms to censor lawful speech to avoid liability. Because the duty ties liability to specific categories of content, including information about depression, eating disorders, and substance use, critics predict platforms will suppress that content for all users rather than risk enforcement.

Critics say topics like transgender healthcare, reproductive rights, and coverage of armed conflicts could be swept up if a platform decides the safest strategy is to remove anything a regulator might later call harmful to minors’ mental health. Senator Rand Paul, opposing the bill, argued the logic could extend to restricting minors from watching sports broadcasts carrying gambling or alcohol advertising.

Supporters counter that the bill regulates platform design choices rather than speech, and they point to a rule of construction protecting a minor’s ability to independently search for health resources. Whether courts would accept that distinction is unresolved. The arguments have not been tested in court because the bill is not yet law.

Where the Bill Stands Now

As of mid-2025, the Senate version was referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.¹ A companion bill, H.R. 6484, has been introduced in the House. Neither chamber has voted on the current text. The bill has bipartisan sponsorship and the public backing of a coalition of more than 39 state attorneys general, but it faces the same obstacle that stalled the previous version: reaching a floor vote in the House while disagreements continue over the scope of the duty of care and the First Amendment concerns. No compliance deadlines exist because the bill has not been enacted. If it passes, platforms would get a window after the effective date to come into compliance, with specifics shaped by FTC rulemaking.

1
Congress.gov. S.1748 – Kids Online Safety Act 119th Congress (2025-2026)
2
Congress.gov. S.1409 – 118th Congress (2023-2024) Kids Online Safety Act
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Congress.gov. Kids Online Safety Act
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Congress.gov. S.1748 – 119th Congress (2025-2026) Kids Online Safety Act
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Congress.gov. H.R.6484 – 119th Congress (2025-2026) Kids Online Safety Act
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Federal Register. Adjustments to Civil Penalty Amounts