HR7757-119

What This Bill Does

The KIDS Act combines several online-safety bills into one federal framework covering minors under 17, with some stricter rules for children under 13. It regulates pornography-focused platforms, large interactive content platforms, messaging features, online video games, and consumer chatbots. It also directs federal studies, public education, and a temporary Commerce Department partnership, and gives the Federal Trade Commission and State officials enforcement authority.

The SCREEN Act title applies to public platforms that knowingly make sexual material harmful to minors available and devote more than one-third of their material to it. Beginning one year after enactment, those platforms must use commercially available age-verification technology reasonably designed for accuracy and block minors from covered material. Self-attestation is insufficient. Platforms and contractors must explain the verification process, address circumvention, minimize retention and disclosure of verification data, and maintain administrative, technical, and physical security. The title does not require government-issued identification. The FTC must consult computer scientists, child-safety advocates, privacy specialists, verification vendors, security experts, and cryptographers. GAO must evaluate effectiveness, compliance, privacy, security, speech, behavioral, economic, psychological, and social effects after three years.

The Kids Online Safety Act subtitle covers publicly available interactive platforms whose primary purpose is sharing user-generated content, which use engagement features and personal information for advertising, marketing, or recommendations. Providers must maintain reasonable policies addressing severe threats of violence, sexual exploitation and abuse, illegal or age-restricted drugs and products, gambling, alcohol, and deceptive financial harm. The text does not create a general duty of care and does not require platforms to block a minor's deliberate search or request for content or access to prevention resources.

Known minor users must receive easy controls to limit contact, prevent profile recommendations to adults, reduce compulsive design features, restrict geolocation sharing, and opt out of or limit personalized recommendations. The most protective privacy and safety choices must be defaults. Parents must be able to view and change account settings, restrict purchases, monitor and limit time, and use the same safety controls. Children under 13 receive the most protective parental-tool defaults, subject to a transition for parents who previously opted out. Interfaces may not be designed to impair use of safeguards. Platforms must provide age-appropriate controls in the same language and format as the service and notify minors when parental tools operate.

Platforms must offer a child-harm reporting channel, a dedicated electronic contact, receipt confirmation, and a substantive response within ten days or as promptly as needed for an imminent threat. Before a known minor registers or buys something, the platform must explain its safeguards and parental tools. It must notify a parent and obtain verifiable parental consent, with a safe harbor for compliance through COPPA procedures. Paid endorsements shown to minors require clear labels, and platforms may not facilitate ads to known minors for narcotics, cannabis, tobacco, gambling, or alcohol.

Every covered platform must obtain an independent third-party audit within 18 months and annually thereafter. Auditors must assess minor access, child-versus-teen differences, known minor user counts, time spent, harm policies, use of safeguards and parental tools, reports received, handling of reports, minor-data practices, and design-feature review. Providers must supply relevant information, systems access, and material facts. Audit results go to the FTC within 30 days, and selected metrics become public within 45 days. This subtitle does not itself require age gating or age verification.

The Safe Messaging for Kids title prohibits ephemeral messaging for every known minor and direct messaging for known children under 13. Platforms that offer direct messaging to known teens must provide parents with accessible controls. Defaults let a parent approve unapproved contacts, manage approved contacts, receive age-change notices, disable messaging, block users or groups, and let a teen hide a profile, online status, and messaging access. Platforms may not degrade unrelated functionality merely because controls are active and must reasonably deter easy circumvention. These duties must be implemented to the maximum technically feasible extent without compromising strong encryption.

The SPY Kids title bars market or product research on known minors unless used solely to improve privacy, security, transparency, or safety or needed for legal compliance. It preserves processing solely for independent or internal measurement of advertising or content performance, reach, and frequency. The messaging and research titles preempt directly overlapping State requirements while preserving generally applicable consumer-protection law, tort, contract, product-liability law, and criminal remedies.

Online video-game providers must give parents easy, default-on, maximally protective controls over communication involving known minor users. They must also let minors and parents prevent profile recommendations to adults, restrict purchases, and limit play time, and must notify minors when controls apply. The title covers digital storefronts, console networks, mobile or cloud gaming platforms, and similar providers of interactive online games.

Consumer chatbot providers must tell known minor users, in plain age-appropriate language, that the chatbot is artificial intelligence rather than a person. They must provide suicide and crisis-line resources when a minor raises suicide or suicidal ideation, prompt a break after three continuous hours, and maintain policies addressing sexual material harmful to minors and promotion of gambling, narcotics, tobacco, or alcohol. A chatbot may not falsely claim to be a licensed professional. The title expressly preserves access to prevention and mitigation resources.

The FTC, HHS, SAMHSA, FDA, DEA, NIH, and NIMH receive study, consultation, education, and reporting duties. Required work covers minors' social-media use and data, mental-health effects, access to fentanyl through social media, industry safety tools, and a four-year longitudinal study of chatbot risks and benefits for loneliness, anxiety, social skills, isolation, depression, self-harm, and suicidal ideation. The FTC must run a national internet-safety education campaign, report annually for ten years, and publish age-appropriate resources on safe chatbot use.

The Commerce Secretary must establish a Kids Internet Safety Partnership within one year. Its director coordinates agencies, researchers, parents, minors, educators, platforms, civil-liberties experts, and State attorneys general. The Partnership must publish recurring evidence reports and a provider playbook covering age assurance, design features, parental tools, privacy defaults, reporting systems, safety software, recommendation systems, and chatbots. It terminates five years after establishment.

Violations are enforceable by the FTC as unfair or deceptive practices. State attorneys general and designated State officials may sue in federal court for injunctions, compliance, damages, restitution, compensation, or other relief, subject to FTC notice and limits while a federal action against the same defendant is pending. Constitutional challenges may be filed only in the D.C. Circuit, within 90 days for a facial challenge or 60 days after a challenged action.

The enforcement title bars viewpoint-based enforcement and preserves spam filtering, crime prevention, platform security, COPPA, section 230, lawful investigations, legal claims, incident response, encryption, and ordinary data-deletion practices. It prohibits construing the Act to require disclosure of minors' browsing, searches, messages, contacts, communications metadata, decryption capability, weakened security, indefinite retention, or new affirmative collection of age information. A severability clause protects the remainder if one provision is invalidated.

Who Benefits and How

Minors gain safer defaults, reduced exposure to sexual material, illegal-product promotion, exploitative contacts, compulsive features, deceptive transactions, unsafe chatbot behavior, and unmonitored game communications. Parents gain controls over accounts, contact, messaging, purchases, play time, recommendations, and privacy. People using strong encryption retain its protection. Schools, nonprofits, researchers, clinicians, and the public gain education and evidence about online risks and benefits.

Who Bears the Burden and How

Covered platforms, pornography-focused services, messaging providers, game distributors, and chatbot providers must redesign products, add controls and notices, respond to reports, secure verification data, restrict specified activity, and undergo enforcement. Third-party auditors and verification vendors gain work but assume security and compliance duties. The FTC, GAO, Commerce, HHS, FDA, DEA, NIH, NIMH, State attorneys general, and federal courts must administer studies, reports, consultation, guidance, enforcement, and review.

Key Provisions

• Requires privacy-preserving age verification on pornography-focused platforms.
• Prohibits self-attestation as the sole age check.
• Requires protective defaults and parental tools on covered platforms.
• Requires child-harm reporting channels and prompt responses.
• Labels paid endorsements and bars illegal-product advertising to known minors.
• Requires annual independent platform audits and public metrics.
• Prohibits ephemeral messaging for known minors.
• Prohibits direct messaging for known children under 13.
• Requires parental controls for teen direct messaging without weakening encryption.
• Limits market research on known minors.
• Requires protective communication, purchase, and time controls in online games.
• Requires chatbot identity, crisis-resource, break, and harm-prevention policies.
• Orders federal social-media, fentanyl, safety-tool, and chatbot studies.
• Creates national education campaigns and a five-year safety partnership.
• Authorizes FTC and State civil enforcement.
• Centralizes constitutional review in the D.C. Circuit.
• Protects speech, prevention resources, encryption, privacy, section 230, and COPPA.