The House Energy and Commerce Committee announced this week what it is calling a landmark bipartisan deal on children’s online safety, the Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act. It bundles portions of more than a dozen bills into a single legislative package, and its sponsors are presenting it as the most serious congressional effort in a generation to regulate social media platforms’ impact on children.
There is just one problem. The Senators who wrote the bill this package is built around, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), have made clear they do not recognize what the House has produced.
What the KIDS Act Is, and What It Isn’t
The House package, introduced by Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-KY) and Ranking Member Frank Pallone (D-NJ), consolidates KOSA, COPPA 2.0, a new data broker registry, and more than a dozen related child safety proposals into a single vehicle. On paper, it is an ambitious piece of legislation. It would require platforms to set minors’ accounts to maximum privacy and safety protections by default, disable addictive design features, block private messaging for children under 13, prohibit disappearing messages for teens under 17, and create new safeguards for AI chatbots and online gaming platforms.
Several of the bills folded into this package represent years of serious, bipartisan work. It is genuinely unfortunate that strong, standalone legislation has been roped into a vehicle that, at its core, is structurally flawed. That flaw is the absence of a duty of care.
The Duty of Care: What It Is and Why It Matters
The duty of care provision that Senators Blumenthal and Blackburn wrote into the Senate version of KOSA is not a technical detail or a matter of legislative preference. It is the enforcement backbone of the entire framework.
Under the Senate version, social media platforms would be legally required to take reasonable care to prevent documented harms to minors, including the promotion of eating disorders, self-harm, suicide, substance abuse, and sexual exploitation. Crucially, it would give harmed children and their parents a legal cause of action when platforms fail to act. It also authorizes the Federal Trade Commission to bring enforcement actions against noncompliant companies.
The House KIDS Act removes this entirely. In its place, platforms would be subject to annual safety audits. An audit can document what a company is doing, or not doing. It cannot compel compensation for a child who was harmed. It cannot create liability for a platform that knew about a design feature driving self-harm and chose to keep it anyway. The difference between an audit requirement and a duty of care is the difference between a report card and accountability.
The Senate Champions Are Clear: This Is Not Acceptable
Senators Blumenthal (D-CT) and Blackburn (R-TN) co-authored KOSA in 2022 in the wake of the Facebook Files leak, which revealed Meta’s own internal research showing Instagram worsened body image for 32% of teenage girls who already felt badly about themselves. They have championed the legislation through four congressional sessions. When the combined KOSA and COPPA 2.0 package passed the Senate in July 2024 on a 91 to 3 vote, one of the largest bipartisan margins on any tech-related bill in recent memory, it was their version, with duty of care intact.
KOSA without a duty of care isn’t KOSA, it’s a blank check to Big Tech 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.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), co-author of KOSA
Without a duty of care, Big Tech companies will maintain the status quo of putting profit before the safety of our children.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), co-author of KOSA
Blackburn and Blumenthal have 75 Senate co-sponsors behind their version of KOSA. Three-quarters of the Senate has signed onto legislation that includes a duty of care. Senator Blackburn is simultaneously in active negotiations with the White House on a parallel package that would pair the full Senate version of KOSA, including duty of care, with the No Fakes Act protecting artists from AI impersonation. The White House has signaled its support for the Senate’s approach. Parent advocacy groups have been equally direct.
Bill Packages: A Tool That Requires the Right Foundation
In a crowded Congressional calendar, legislative packages serve a real purpose. Bundling related bills into a single vehicle can unlock floor time, satisfy multiple constituencies simultaneously, and create the kind of political momentum that standalone legislation rarely achieves. When a package is built on solid, broadly supported policy, and when its component pieces reinforce rather than undercut each other, it is a legitimate and often effective pathway to enactment.
The KIDS Act is not that. A bill package works when its foundation is strong. The Energy and Commerce Committee advanced the KIDS Act in March 2026 on a 28 to 24 party-line vote, with Democrats objecting to both the preemption language and the missing duty of care. That partisan split in committee is not a foundation for a bill that will survive bicameral negotiation, and with the Senate’s KOSA champions on record calling the House version dead on arrival, the path to a conference agreement that does not restore duty of care is difficult to see.
Ascend Consulting DC tracks federal and state child protection, technology, and platform accountability legislation.