“Major social media companies, the companies this bill regulates, are currently on trial across the country,” the June letter from nearly 100 parent, youth and tech-focused organizations warned, arguing that stronger legal obligations are needed to change product design choices that, they say, prioritize engagement over wellbeing.
Senate Commerce Committee will mark up five bills Wednesday
The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation is set to mark up five bills that would reshape rules for online privacy, child safety and artificial intelligence. The most prominent measure is the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), but the package also includes legislation focused on age verification and several AI-specific proposals aimed at chatbots, family controls, and toys with embedded AI components.
Kids Online Safety Act: duty of care, parental controls and FTC enforcement
KOSA, sponsored by Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R‑Tenn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D‑Conn.), would require online platforms — explicitly including social media, video games, messaging apps and streaming services — to exercise “reasonable care” when designing features that could lead to addictive or harmful behaviors for users under 17. The bill would give parents digital tools to control and monitor children’s accounts, bar market or product research on children under 13, and empower the Federal Trade Commission to investigate, fine and enforce the law.
Earlier versions of KOSA drew support from large technology companies such as Apple and OpenAI, while nearly 100 smaller organizations later opposed the House’s watered-down version. Those groups objected after the House removed what they called the stronger “duty to care” language. Senators Blackburn and Blumenthal said the House version was “dead on arrival” without those provisions, and the duty-of-care language remains in the Senate draft being considered.
This site is the portfolio.
OSINTSights runs on Cloudflare Workers, D1, R2, and Vectorize, with an AI pipeline on Hetzner ARM. Nubivance designed, built, and operates it. We do the same for clients.
See what we build →SCREEN Act: age verification’s privacy trade-offs
The SCREEN Act, introduced last year by Sen. Mike Lee (R‑Utah), would require social media companies to implement age verification technologies. Lee has teamed with parent-led groups to push for age-verification laws at the state level that expand parental control over children’s social media accounts, and some public surveys have shown broad support for such measures.
But privacy and security experts warn about the risks. Louis Eichenbaum, former chief information security officer at the Department of the Interior and now federal chief technology officer at ColorTokens, told CyberScoop that age verification “increasingly requires collecting, storing or validating sensitive identity information.” He said the goal “should not simply be verifying age, it should be doing so while minimizing the collection, retention, and exposure of personally identifiable information,” because “Every additional piece of identity data collected expands the attack surface and increases the potential impact of a breach.”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, through director of federal affairs India McKinney, argued the SCREEN Act is broader than many state laws and would sweep in many mainstream platforms. McKinney wrote that the bill “requires nearly any service hosting even a single piece of sexually explicit content to verify the ages of its users,” which could extend obligations to streaming services like Netflix and social platforms such as Reddit, Discord, or Bluesky if they host any adult content.
AI rules: Youth AI Privacy Act, Chatbot Act and children’s AI toy study
The Senate markup will also consider multiple AI-focused measures. The Youth AI Privacy Act, authored by Sen. Ed Markey (D‑Mass.), would require new safety features for AI chatbots: banning push alerts, requiring chatbots to disclose they are not human, limiting data retention, and prohibiting the use of minors’ data for AI training or any purpose beyond providing answers, according to a fact sheet from Markey’s office.
The Chatbot Act, sponsored by Sens. Ted Cruz (R‑Texas), Brian Schatz (D‑Hawaii), John Curtis (R‑Utah) and Adam Schiff (D‑Calif.), would require AI companies to implement “family accounts” for chatbots that let parents monitor and restrict their children’s interactions. Cruz said the current situation “has left many parents in the dark” about their kids’ AI use.
Separately, the Children’s Artificial Intelligence Toy Safety Act, from Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D‑Ill.), would commission a federal study into toys sold to children that incorporate AI or chatbot components.
What this means for technology companies, parent groups, and regulators
- Technology companies and platform designers: firms that previously supported KOSA — including named backers like Apple and OpenAI in earlier versions — will face a Senate draft that keeps the duty-of-care standard and expands parental-control mandates, while also confronting proposed age verification requirements that experts say raise identity-data risks.
- Parent, youth and privacy organizations: nearly 100 groups have publicly opposed the House’s weaker version of KOSA and urged stronger design standards; other advocacy organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation have objected to broad age-verification rules that could force mainstream platforms to collect sensitive identity data.
- Regulators and lawmakers: the FTC would be explicitly empowered under KOSA to investigate and enforce penalties, and lawmakers will need to weigh competing claims about design obligations, consumer privacy, and the practical security implications of collecting identity information for age checks.
The Senate Commerce Committee’s Wednesday markup will determine which of these measures move forward and in what form. The debate puts design standards, parental controls, age-verification trade-offs, and new AI-specific consumer protections in direct tension — and leaves the Federal Trade Commission, technology firms, parents and privacy advocates watching closely.
