Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA / KIDS Act)

The Kids Online Safety Act — now folded into a broader House package called the Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act — is the leading federal attempt to regulate how online platforms treat minors. Almost everyone agrees kids deserve protection online. The fight is over the mechanism, because the leading mechanisms have a way of landing on adults too.

What it would do

The core ideas across the various versions:

• Require platforms to default minors into the most protective settings.
• Give kids and parents tools to limit usage and exposure to certain content.
• Take aim at “dark patterns” — autoplay, infinite scroll, push notifications engineered to maximize engagement.

The most contested piece is KOSA’s “duty of care”: a legal obligation for platforms to prevent design-driven harms to minors. Critics — including civil-liberties groups — warn that to comply, platforms would likely verify everyone’s age (implicating adult privacy) and over-filter lawful speech to avoid liability, with the effects falling hardest on marginalized youth seeking health or identity information.

Where it stands (June 2026)

This is the crux of why the status is advancing rather than passed: the two chambers want different bills.

• The House passed the KIDS Act 267–117 on June 29, 2026 — but its version omits KOSA’s duty-of-care provision.
• Senate sponsors immediately called the House bill “dead” in their chamber precisely because it drops duty of care, which they consider the whole point.
• Separately, negotiations have floated tying kids’-safety legislation to federal preemption of state AI laws, adding another moving part.

In short: a bill has passed one chamber, the chambers disagree on the central provision, and the outcome is unsettled.

Timeline

• 2022–2024 — Earlier versions of KOSA pass the Senate but stall in the House amid free-speech and privacy objections.
• 2025 — Reintroduced in the 119th Congress (S.1748 / H.R.6484) alongside a wave of related “online safety” bills.
• June 29, 2026 — House passes the KIDS Act (267–117) without duty of care; Senate sponsors declare it unacceptable.
• Now — Chambers negotiating; duty of care and possible AI-law preemption are the sticking points.

What it means for you

If a version with a broad duty of care and de-facto age verification becomes law, expect more sites to ask you to prove your age — often by handing an ID or a face scan to a third party, which is itself a privacy risk. That’s why privacy advocates support the goal of protecting kids while opposing age-verification mandates as the method. Watch whether the final bill relies on verification and filtering, or on narrower, design-focused rules.

Where to follow it: the bill texts live on Congress.gov (S.1748, H.R.6484). We’ll update this entry as the House–Senate negotiation resolves — or doesn’t.