With the clock running out on the 119th Congress, Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) tried on Wednesday to pass the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) by unanimous consent, only for Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who blocked a similar effort in 2024, to object again. The bill’s sponsors have repeatedly pitched it as the answer to the nearly half of parents who report being concerned about what their kids encounter online. However well-intentioned, KOSA would hand federal regulators control over what we see online and push platforms to censor lawful speech, without making kids any safer.
KOSA’s “duty of care” requires online platforms to use “reasonable care” in designing their products to prevent and mitigate a list of harms to minors that includes eating disorders, substance use, anxiety, depression, and “compulsive usage.” Nowhere does the bill say what “reasonable care” means in practice. The test is whether, after the fact, a “reasonable and prudent person” would agree that a design feature was “a contributing factor” to one of those harms.
Since anxiety or depression can stem from almost anything in a teenager’s life and platforms can’t know which features will be blamed, they will hedge by changing both how their products work and what content they show teens. The line between the two is thinner than KOSA’s sponsors suggest. Though they say the duty only regulates platforms’ design choices, not content, the bill defines “design feature” to include the recommendation systems that decide which posts and videos fill a teen’s feed. Naturally, a feed doesn’t cause anxiety just by existing. Rather, if it contributes at all, it does so through the videos and posts it shows to each user.
To limit their liability, platforms will likely err on the side of showing teens less. They will hide or remove lawful posts about dieting, body image, depression, and other sensitive subjects, or keep teens off their services entirely. Britain offers a preview of what teens would lose. After its Online Safety Act took effect last year, X and Reddit restricted users from posts about the wars in Gaza and Ukraine and even parliamentary debates. The enactment of KOSA would create a smaller, blander internet for teens, with fewer places to work through hard questions before adulthood. These effects would reach beyond social media to the video games, messaging apps, and streaming services also covered under KOSA.
The first casualties are likely to be the spaces struggling teens need most, such as recovery communities and venues for candid conversations about mental health. Under the same British law, Reddit restricted forums for people trying to quit smoking and for sexual-assault survivors, along with a self-harm community where, as one report noted, most posts came from “people asking advice on how to stop, how to avoid relapsing.”
The bill’s promise not to enforce a duty of care “based upon the viewpoint of users” only binds regulators. Platforms are still pressured to take content down before regulators ever act, meaning there will be no government enforcement action that anyone can challenge as viewpoint discrimination. Federal courts have already blocked similar duties in California and Arkansas, finding that they would push platforms to censor protected speech.
Even if KOSA survived a court challenge, the job of defining “reasonable care” would fall to the Federal Trade Commission. Using guidance and enforcement actions, the agency would decide which designs, and by extension which content, cross the line. Platforms will subsequently build around whatever they expect the agency to want, so the FTC’s view of what harms teens would effectively become the rule across much of the internet. Since the Supreme Court’s June decision in Trump v. Slaughter — allowing the President to remove FTC commissioners at will — that power would belong to whoever occupies the White House. KOSA would thereby transform the FTC into a “Ministry of Truth,” free to label disfavored subjects as causing “anxiety” or “depression” and watch platforms scrub them for teens and adults alike. Over time, it could tilt the online public square toward whatever views the administration in power favors. Conservatives who objected when the Biden administration pressed platforms to take down posts, and progressives wary of today’s FTC, should both think twice before handing any administration that authority.
KOSA would also push platforms to check the age of every user, adults included. The bill’s obligations kick in whenever a platform “knows” a user is a minor, a standard that includes knowledge “fairly implied on the basis of objective circumstances.” The bill insists it does not require age verification, but when overlooking a single 16 year-old could bring an enforcement action, the safest course is to confirm everyone’s age. For adults, that means handing over a government ID or a facial scan just to post or chat, and giving up the ability to do so anonymously. The Supreme Court has long called anonymous speech “an honorable tradition of advocacy and of dissent,” a tradition that includes the Federalist Papers. A federal judge previously blocked Georgia’s social media age-verification law partly because it “would potentially all but kill anonymous speech online.”
Every ID and facial scan becomes a target for hackers and bad actors. Last year, a breach at one of Discord’s outside vendors exposed roughly 70,000 government ID photos that users had submitted to verify their age. Teens’ face scans and personal details would sit in the same databases, leaving the kids KOSA aims to protect more exposed online.
Keeping kids safe online works best through preparation, not prohibition. Parents already have access to built-in tools that can set time limits or filter content to fit their family’s values. Schools can teach students to navigate digital spaces safely. Congress should fund the investigators and prosecutors who pursue predators targeting kids online.
The clock may be running out on the 119th Congress, but KOSA’s core flaw will outlast a single session. Whether it’s in the current Congress or the next, senators should recognize the bill for what it is. Its duty of care would give Washington control over what Americans see online, push platforms to censor lawful speech, and make kids’ personal data less safe. Protecting kids online is a worthy goal. KOSA is the wrong way to pursue it.
Turner Loesel is a Policy Analyst at The James Madison Institute in Tallahassee, Florida.
