Congress is struggling to reach a consensus on legislation to protect children in the digital age after years of legislative work, but at least one bill stands a chance of becoming law this year.
The Senate on Thursday passed a bill to expand a 1998 law that restricts the online collection, use and disclosure of personal information of children younger than 13.
The Children and Teens’ Online Privacy and Protection Act, or COPPA 2.0, extends the law’s restrictions to teens ages 13 to 16, unless they provide consent for internet companies to collect their data, and cracks down on loopholes Big Tech has exploited.
The bill passed by unanimous consent, meaning all 100 senators supported it, and sailed through without a roll-call vote.
The House has made progress in bipartisan negotiations on its own version of COPPA 2.0, leaving hope for a bill that can pass, even as lawmakers in the lower chamber remain deadlocked over other children’s online safety bills.
Sen. Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts Democrat, authored the initial COPPA law as a House member in 1998 and has been trying since 2011 to modernize it to address the rise of social media.
“Only birds tweeted 25 years ago. Tick-tock was the sound that a clock made,” the senator said. “But one thing that has not changed [is] children and teens deserve privacy, they deserve safety.”
COPPA 2.0 bans targeted advertising to minors and “creates an eraser button, allowing children and teens and their parents to delete the personal data that platforms have collected,” Mr. Markey said.
He urged the House to take the unanimously approved Senate bill instead of a “weaker partisan version” that he argued would strip key protections from the legislation.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee pulled that partisan version from its Thursday markup of children’s online safety bills.
Chairman Brett Guthrie, Kentucky Republican, said committee staff made “substantial progress” toward a bipartisan agreement, and he would give it time to come to fruition.
The bipartisan goodwill ended there, as committee Republicans advanced three other children’s online safety bills, two of which Democrats uniformly opposed.
Only Sammy’s Law, named after a child who died of fentanyl poisoning from a counterfeit drug purchased through Snapchat, picked up a handful of Democratic votes. The measure would require platforms to allow third-party safety software to alert parents when their children encounter harmful content.
A separate bill to require app stores to verify that children cannot access age-restricted material and to give parents more control over downloads passed the panel along party lines.
The committee spent the bulk of the markup debating a larger package of 12 online safety bills, the Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act. It advanced on a 28-24 vote along party lines.
Mr. Guthrie said Republicans worked with Democrats for months to find an acceptable compromise on the package, but “the absence of a bipartisan consensus cannot be an excuse for inaction.”
Democrats said they want to achieve a bipartisan solution but can’t agree to a bill that falls short of its stated goal to protect children.
“I really believe that these bills would leave our kids less safe online than they are today,” said Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey, the panel’s top Democrat, accusing Republicans of “handing Big Tech a giant gift.”
The bill is unlikely to get to the floor without Democratic support because Republicans can afford only one defection on party-line votes, and the bill has more Republican critics than that.
The centerpiece of the package is the Kids Online Safety Act, a bill that Congress has been working to perfect for years.
The version the Energy and Commerce Committee advanced was at least the third attempt Republicans have made in the past two years to make the bill more palatable to their conference and to fortify it against likely legal challenges.
House Democrats have opposed each one. They lamented changes that stripped key provisions from the bipartisan bill that lawmakers in both chambers championed in 2024.
The Senate combined the original Kids Online Safety Act and COPPA 2.0 that year and passed the package by a vote of 91-3.
Senate authors made some tweaks to the Kids Online Safety Act, earning endorsements from X and Apple while maintaining bipartisan support.
Rep. Jake Auchincloss, Massachusetts Democrat, called the House bill a “false flag operation by Meta,” which opposes the Senate version. Meta owns Instagram and Facebook.
Rep. Diana Harshbarger, Tennessee Republican, said it is Democrats who are aiding the social media companies with their opposition.
“They’re pretending it’s for parents, but really it’s because they want to delay any legislation that goes against Big Tech at the expense of your and my children,” she said.
A coalition of advocacy groups, many led by parents who have lost children to online harms, sided with Democrats in a letter asking Energy and Commerce Committee leaders not to advance the legislation as written.
“Every provision we fought for has been stripped or disclaimed,” they wrote. “Every loophole the companies sought has been written in.”
• Lindsey McPherson can be reached at lmcpherson@washingtontimes.com.
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