WASHINGTON — A youth advocacy group for safer online practices is pushing for tougher restrictions on social media platforms after a House committee last week approved a watered-down version of a kids’ online safety measure.
“The changes that were made ahead of the Wednesday markup reflected a weakened duty of care,” said Zamaan Qureshi, co-chair of Design It For Us, a coalition representing people who are 16 to about 25 years old, who are commonly identified as the largest users of social media apps. “So what we want to see is some of those definitions changed before the bill reaches the House floor to make sure that we’re protecting all young people and making sure that we’re strengthening this duty of care.”
The House Energy and Commerce Committee on Sept. 18 approved a kids’ online safety bill despite Democrats objecting to the last-minute changes they said would dilute its effectiveness.
Qureshi said in an interview that Design It For Us is hopeful that House lawmakers will strengthen the duty-of-care provisions before the bill clears the chamber — though he declined to say whether he has received such assurances from Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., or from Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., the measure’s sponsor.
A spokesperson for the committee did not respond to a query seeking clarification.
Qureshi’s coalition, along with Accountable Tech, another group that favors restrictions on tech platforms, brought dozens of young people to Capitol Hill last week to lobby for tougher measures.
The duty-of-care standard in Bilirakis’ original measure, which garnered broad bipartisan support, would’ve required tech companies to design their platforms with the aim of mitigating certain physical and mental harms to users age 17 and under.
But a day before the committee vote, Bilirakis offered a substitute amendment that removed two key elements from the original measure. The first would’ve required tech companies to exercise a “reasonable care in the creation and implementation of any design feature to prevent and mitigate” harms to minors, including anxiety, depression, eating disorders, substance use disorders and suicidal behaviors. The new standard was pared to protect against just potential physical harms and online harassment.
The second provision that was removed would’ve required tech companies to design their products and services to mitigate “patterns of use that indicate or encourage compulsive usage by minors.”
The substitute amendment was approved on a voice vote.
Democrats on the committee, including ranking member Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J., opposed the changes and said they would not vote for the bill. However, they did not challenge Rodgers or seek a roll call when she declared a voice vote in the bill’s favor.
A Senate bill that passed the chamber in July in a 91-3 vote includes the stronger duty-of-care language.
‘Serious concerns’
Even with the weakening of some provisions, however, the measure faces opposition from tech industry groups.
“The changes lawmakers made to that provision did not reduce NetChoice’s serious concerns about the impact of KOSA,” said Krista Chavez, a spokeswoman for the trade group representing top tech companies, referring to the measure’s title of Kids Online Safety Act. “It’s still an online censorship bill that contains the fundamental problems of the Senate’s version, implicating constitutionally protected speech, and NetChoice does not support it.”
Another tech industry group, Chamber of Progress, opposes the bill from a different perspective.
“Anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ+ supporters of KOSA have not been shy in saying the quiet part out loud,” Todd O’Boyle, senior director of technology policy at Chamber of Progress, said in an email. “Project 2025’s architects are promoting KOSA as a means to continue attacking women seeking reproductive care and teens seeking a refuge online. Democrats should not enable their agenda.”
Project 2025 is a set of policy proposals prepared by the Heritage Foundation for a future Donald Trump presidency and was once backed by Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, Trump’s vice presidential running mate. Trump has publicly distanced himself from the Project 2025 goals.
The Chamber of Progress cited a Heritage Foundation analysis from July that examined concerns raised by opponents of the Senate bill. In that analysis, Heritage noted that allowing kids and their parents to restrict the sharing of their geolocation data would rein in the ability of tech platforms to partner with “Planned Parenthood to identify, target, and ‘persuade’ vulnerable women to seek out abortions.”
Heritage Foundation did not respond to a request for comment.
More concerning to advocates like Qureshi, however, are a host of dangers they say will go unaddressed if the measure remains diluted.
The substitute amendment “in essence removed the ability to target some of the design features that have preyed on my generation, preyed on young people,” he said. “We have members in our coalition who’ve experienced eating disorders related to engagement with social media platforms. We’ve seen sextortion cases that young people have experienced. We’ve seen young people channeled towards more dangerous content or connected to strangers that they’ve never met before, all because of design features that were not properly built to mitigate against these harms.”
And no longer restricting apps from encouraging compulsive usage basically rewards platforms such as TikTok and Snapchat for keeping young users on the platform longer than is healthy, Qureshi added.
The committee on Sept. 18 also approved, as amended, a measure sponsored by Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Mich., that has the backing of 27 lawmakers from both parties. It would prohibit online platforms from disseminating children’s personal information without obtaining a verifiable parental consent, effectively ending ads targeted at kids and teens.
The bill would raise the age of children protected to up to 17, from up to 12 under current law. The Senate version of that measure also passed in a 91-3 vote in July.
