The Legislative Push for Online Safety
The Senate Commerce Committee recently advanced the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). Earlier, the House of Representatives successfully passed the Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act. Consequently, these massive legislative packages bundle revised privacy rules, new AI chatbot regulations, and strict age verification mandates. However, the bill’s future in the Senate remains highly uncertain. Currently, lawmakers are actively negotiating to pair this children’s safety package with federal preemption of certain state AI laws.
Surveillance Models and Outdated Protections
Children’s privacy would be significantly better protected under a comprehensive national privacy law. Online services constantly use invasive inference, aggressive profiling, and engagement-optimized designs. Ultimately, these dangerous practices harm users of all ages. For example, major social media platforms earned over $11 billion in advertising revenue from American minors in 2022. While the current COPPA law provides a basic foundation, children’s digital lives have changed much faster than the regulations. Therefore, simply relying on an “actual knowledge” standard creates massive enforcement gaps for mixed-age platforms.
Constitutional and Political Obstacles
Despite recent legislative progress, lawmakers face severe constitutional and political constraints. Recently, federal courts have blocked several state-level social media age-verification laws on First Amendment grounds. Furthermore, children’s safety has unfortunately become a bargaining chip in a larger political fight over AI regulations. If lawmakers strictly mandate age-gating as the primary compliance mechanism, platforms will collect even more sensitive personal information. Consequently, tech companies would need to build highly intrusive identity verification systems across the entire internet.
Paving the Way for National Privacy
Instead of just building age gates, policymakers should focus aggressively on underlying data incentives. Lawmakers must treat strict data minimization as a fundamental corporate duty. If a platform serves minors, it should never collect or retain unnecessary personal data. Enacting a strong children’s privacy bill could easily demonstrate that a national standard works effectively. Ultimately, these specific online privacy bills must serve as the starting point for a comprehensive national privacy baseline. Otherwise, Congress will normalize the dangerous idea that digital privacy protections remain entirely optional for adults.
Reference
Tanner, B., & Lee, N. T. (2026, 5 agosto). Congress should make children’s privacy the on-ramp to a national privacy law for all. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/congress-should-make-childrens-privacy-the-on-ramp-to-a-national-privacy-law-for-all/?utm_campaign=Brookings%20Brief&utm_medium=email&utm_content=432144006&utm_source=hs_email