Senators again try to ban social networks preteen

The sens. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) are reintroducing a bill that aims to prohibit social networks platforms from allowing children under 13 to use them. The bipartisan Children's media act (Kosma) It was introduced last year, but did not progress beyond the stage of the committee. However, Kosma can get more impulse this time given the current political landscape.

“I'm going to do everything I can pass from the committee and advance on the floor (…) and signed the law,” Cruz told . “Ted and I are in the midst of about two dozen different disagreements and disputes, but the only thing that seems to unite political parties is that we need to protect young children from the negative results of being on social networks,” said Shatz.

Cruz is now the president of the Senate Committee (which has become an outstanding battlefield for issues related to social networks in recent years). Not only that, Republicans have control of both Congress cameras, while Lina Khan is no longer head of the Federal Commerce Commission.

Under Kosma, that agency would have an additional regulatory power on social media platforms. Some Republicans were reluctant to deliver those reins to Khan. “I think that Khan's period as president of the FTC) understandably caused a significant reluctance by the Congress to trust any additional authority in the FTC,” Cruz said.

If Kosma becomes law as it is, social networks platforms would have to eliminate any account in power of users under 13, as well as any data collected from those children. It will also block the use of data collected from users under 17 to suggest or promote content algorithmically. In addition, it stipulates that schools would have to prevent students from accessing social media services on school devices and networks to continue receiving certain subsidies.

Schatz was among a bipartisan group of senators that introduced the law of protection of children in social means in 2023. That bill was aimed at establishing 13 as the minimum age to use social networks, and requires the consent of the parents For children under 18 to access such platforms. However, the bill Go through the Commerce Committee.

Last July, two online security bill that apparently sought to protect minors, the children's online security law and the very derived of children (KOSA), in a vote of 91-3. However, neither before the previous congress ended on January 3.