House Advances Bipartisan Kids' Online Safety Bill, But Senate Showdown Looms

On June 22, 2026, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) and Ranking Member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) announced a bipartisan agreement on a revised version of the KIDS Act (H.R. 7757), marking the most significant congressional advance on children's online safety legislation in years. The House passed H.R. 7757, as amended, on June 29, 2026, setting up a potential showdown with the Senate. The revised KIDS Act consolidates elements of 14 pending legislative proposals — including KOSA and COPPA 2.0, both of which have previously passed the Senate and cleared the House Energy and Commerce Committee — into a single, comprehensive framework. The announcement, however, was met immediately with objections from Senate sponsors and civil liberties groups, underscoring the difficult legislative road ahead.

What the Revised KIDS Act Would Do

The revised KIDS Act is an omnibus proposal designed to address the full range of harms that children and teenagers face online. Its key components include:

• Strengthened digital privacy for minors. Building on the framework of COPPA 2.0, the bill would expand privacy protections beyond the current Children's Online Privacy Protection Act's coverage of children under 13 to encompass teenagers, and would ban targeted advertising to minors. The KIDS Act creates a broader compliance standard than currently in place, across multiple layers, leading to expanded compliance obligations.   
• Safety as the default. Incorporating KOSA's core requirement, the bill would require online platforms — including social media, gaming, and other consumer-facing services — to default to their most protective settings for child and teen users, and to provide children and parents with tools to manage account usage and exposure to harmful content.
• Restrictions on addictive design features. The bill takes direct aim at so-called "dark patterns" — product design features (specifically called out in the bill) including push notifications, autoplay, and infinite scrolling — that are engineered to maximize user engagement and that critics argue are particularly harmful to young users.
• Regulation of AI-powered chatbots. The bill addresses harms presented by artificial intelligence-fueled chatbots, reflecting growing congressional concern about the use of AI in consumer-facing products accessed by minors.
• Data broker transparency. The bill includes provisions to increase transparency around data brokers and their collection and sale of personal information belonging to children and teenagers.
• Preemption. Notably, the bill's preemption provision has been described by the Center for Democracy and Technology as "appropriately narrow" — overriding only weaker state laws while preserving the ability of states to enact more stringent protections for children online.

The Critical Fault Line: Duty of Care

The most significant point of contention between the KIDS Act and its Senate counterpart is the absence from H.R. 7757 of a duty of care requirement. The Senate version of KOSA — currently pending in the upper chamber — would make online platforms legally obligated to prevent harm to minors, creating an affirmative and enforceable legal standard. The revised KIDS Act does not include this provision.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a lead sponsor of the Senate's version of KOSA, was swift and unsparing in his criticism: "KOSA without a duty of care isn't KOSA — it's a blank check to Mark Zuckerberg to exploit children. The House's toothless and tepid capitulation is dead in the Senate and a betrayal of families suffering from Big Tech's greed."

Ranking Member Pallone, by contrast, defended the compromise as proof that "Congress can come together to deliver real online protections for our nation's young people," and pointed to the bill's broad scope as evidence of its ambition.

First Amendment Concerns Persist

The revised KIDS Act has not resolved the constitutional concerns that have long shadowed KOSA and similar legislation. The Center for Democracy and Technology, while acknowledging that the bill "includes some important provisions to help" protect children online, raised "serious constitutional" objections — in particular to the bill's provisions incentivizing age verification to access online services. As CDT's free expression project director Kate Ruane noted, such requirements "put the privacy of all internet users — kids and adults alike — at risk" and threaten the right to access constitutionally protected materials.

These concerns echo objections that have been raised by consumer advocates and civil liberties organizations throughout the multi-year legislative history of KOSA and related proposals, and they are likely to feature prominently in any Senate floor debate.

Legislative Context and What Comes Next

Congress has been attempting to enact children's online safety legislation for several years. Both KOSA and COPPA 2.0 have previously cleared the Senate and the House Energy and Commerce Committee, but neither has reached the President's desk. The House Energy and Commerce Committee had advanced a package of 18 children's online safety bills at a December hearing, several of which have been folded into H.R. 7757. Chairman Guthrie and Ranking Member Pallone have indicated they intend to bring the revised KIDS Act to the House floor for a vote in the near term.

 Next Steps

Companies operating online platforms and services accessible to children and teenagers — including social media, gaming, streaming, and AI-powered consumer applications — should closely monitor the progress of Senate and House discussions around the revised KIDS Act and begin assessing their exposure now. Recommended actions include:

• Assess platform design and default settings for compliance with the bill's requirements to default to protective settings for minor users and to disable or limit addictive design features such as push notifications, autoplay, and infinite scrolling.
• Map data flow around teens and children to prepare for implementing any updated compliance obligations.
• Review targeted advertising practices involving minors in anticipation of a potential ban and assess the technical and commercial implications of restricting behavioral advertising to younger users.
• Evaluate data broker relationships and the extent to which personal data of minors is shared with or sold to third parties, in light of the bill's transparency requirements.
• Assess AI-powered products and features, including chatbots, that are accessible to minors and consider what guardrails may be required under the bill's provisions.
• Monitor age verification developments, given both the bill's incentives toward age verification and the ongoing constitutional and privacy debate surrounding such requirements.
• Track preemption developments to understand how the bill's preemption framework would interact with existing and forthcoming state-level children's online safety laws — including those already enacted in states such as Texas, Florida, and Utah — and assess whether a patchwork of state obligations will persist.
• Review vendor agreements to determine potential liability exposure and contracts that may need to be updated.