Support the Kids Online Safety Act, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, and The Kids PRIVACY Act

Thanks for your interest in advocating for a safer online environment for kids, teens and young adults! Your voice is invaluable in this fight – we need to tell lawmakers that our online environment is unsafe and dangerous, and we need to tell them what they can do to improve it for the better.

What can you do to help? To help hold Big Tech accountable, you can join us in supporting three bills recently introduced by lawmakers in Congress: The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), and The Kids PRIVACY Act. These three federal bills would require companies make platforms safer by design; empower rather than restrict young people online. 

Share on social media! Post on social media about how these bills would help protect kids and teens online with the below draft content for social media:

• Rather than restrict young people online, we need Congress to make the internet safer for us. Join me and @DesignItForUs in supporting the Kids Online Safety Act #KOSA , the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act #COPPA, and The Kids PRIVACY Act: DesignItForUs.org [ATTACH GRAPHICS]

• Right now, Congress is considering 3 bills to protect kids and teens’ safety and privacy online. Join me and @DesignItForUs in supporting the Kids Online Safety Act #KOSA , the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act #COPPA, and The Kids PRIVACY Act: DesignItForUs.org [ATTACH GRAPHICS]

Create your own content! Use the below talking points on the three bills to create your own content to help advance the legislation:

• Right now, Congress can protect kids and teens online with three bills recently introduced by lawmakers: The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), and The Kids PRIVACY Act. These three federal bills would require companies make platforms safer by design; empower rather than restrict young people online. 

• The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) would establish protections for kids and teens’ health and well-being online by creating a duty for social media platforms to prevent and mitigate harms to minors such as content promoting of selfharm, suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse, and sexual exploitation.

• The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0) builds upon the federal legislation of the same name passed in 1998 to protect kids online by prohibiting internet companies from collecting personal data from users through the age of 16 without their consent and banning targeted advertising to children and teens. The bill would also create an eraser button for parents and kids to delete their personal information with a company when technologically feasible.

• The Kids PRIVACY Act would also build upon COPPA by expanding the privacy protections of the law to include teenagers through the age of 18 and expanding the requirements to all sites likely to be accessed by children and teens. The bill would also ban companies from targeted advertising to children and teenagers.

• These bills would not attempt to ramp up restrictions for the user, but rather put the onus squarely on Big Tech companies to make their social media products and online platforms safer at the point of design. By outlining the steps that Big Tech, rather than kids and parents, must be responsible for in mitigating profit-driven harm, the lawmakers leading this effort echo our call: we must design social media and online platforms with young people in mind.

• No bill is a silver bullet, especially when it comes to the might of Big Tech and its seemingly endless resources, but these bills lead with the critical notion: Big Tech must take responsibility for the harm it causes, not kids or parents. It will take all collective efforts to take on the power of Big Tech, and we are glad to work alongside the lawmakers fighting to make that happen.

Reach out to alison@designitforus.org to get involved in these additional opportunities to leverage your experience, networks and platforms:  

• Become a media spokesperson
• Write an op-ed
• Join a lobby day