Blumenthal Discusses Sweeping Bill to Improve Kids' Online Safety

[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – Today, U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Chair of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security, discussed the introduction of the Kids Online Safety Act during a virtual press conference with the legislation’s co-sponsor, U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN).

The comprehensive legislation would provide kids and parents with the tools, safeguards, and transparency they need to protect against threats to children’s health and well-being online. Today’s bill introduction follows extensive reporting and a series of five subcommittee hearings spearheaded by Blumenthal and Blackburn with social media companies and advocates on the repeated failures by tech giants to protect kids on their platforms and about the dangers kids face online.

“The purpose of the Kids Online Safety Act is in fact to empower young people, children, who are in the midst of a mental health crisis,” said Blumenthal during today’s press conference. “What we’re doing here is requiring the social media tech platforms to give options to children and their parents, to protect their information, to disable addictive features, and to opt out of the algorithm recommendation that often involve driving toxic content to kids.”

“Now we can no longer rely on Big Tech companies to monitor themselves or to take corrective action. They’ve betrayed their trust and they’ve abjectly failed young people,” Blumenthal emphasized. “We’re imposing, through this bill, accountability. And separate from all of the specific provisions is a legal responsibility, enforceable, a duty of care against those companies.”

“I’m a former attorney general, I used to enforce consumer product safety laws and I think of this law as kind of a product safety law. For way too long, the internet was regarded as different from all other products, just like probably at the beginning of the automobile age, cars were new, there were no speed limits, no seat belts, no air bags,” Blumenthal continued. “Well now we’re going to have guardrails and safe guards for the internet that will enable children and their parents to protect themselves, stop the toxic content that all too often is driven at them, creating those destructive emotional rabbit holes and addictive dark places on the internet that all too often consume our kids.”

The one-page summary of the bill can be found here, the section-by-section summary can be found here, and the full text of the Senate bill can be found here.

The full transcript of Blumenthal’s opening remarks from today’s press call is available below.

U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT): Today is really one of the most exciting in my time in the United States Senate because we’re introducing the Kids Online Safety Act of 2022.

This measure is the result of months of hard work, very bipartisan work, five hearings involving tech executives, whistleblower documents from the tech companies themselves, experts, researchers, and all of us I think have received extensive comments, texts messages, letters, phone calls from parents and kids, and the purpose of the Kids Online Safety Act is in fact to empower young people, children, who are in the midst of a mental health crisis. A mental health crisis that we see across America is shown by rising hospitalization rates for self-harm, suicide, depression, and it has been aggravated by the pandemic and by social media.

What we’ve heard in these months at our hearings and from direct talks with parents is harrowing, haunting stories of heartbreaking loss, destructive content driven to children, addictive dark places, emotional rabbit holes, all the result of Big Tech driving toxic content at kids using black box algorithms that are little understood by parents or children.

And what we’ve seen also frankly is gut-wrenchingly a sense of powerlessness, loss of control from kids themselves. What we’re doing in this bill is empowering children and their parents to take back control and really the power over their lives online, the experiences that they have.

Very bluntly, what we’re doing here is requiring the social media tech platforms to give options to children and their parents, to protect their information, to disable addictive features, and to opt out of the algorithm recommendation that often involve driving toxic content to kids.

Now we can no longer rely on Big Tech companies to monitor themselves or to take corrective action. They’ve betrayed their trust and they’ve abjectly failed young people. In fact, they have driven more and more toxic content to kids to increase the number of eyeballs and dollars and enhance their bottom line. We’re imposing, through this bill, accountability. And separate from all of the specific provisions is a legal responsibility, enforceable, a duty of care against those companies.

Equally important, a requirement for transparency and disclosure so those black box algorithms will be known to the public and to parents. And parents will be given tools to control the amount of time online, purchases by their kids, transparency as to where they’re going and what they’re doing. And kids will have the power to opt out of algorithmic recommendations or down rank those recommendations so they don’t have to use auto play or features like that one.

I think we are on the cusp of a new era for Big Tech, imposing a sense of responsibility that has been completely lacking so far. And we know that it is not only feasible and possible, but that it works. We know that from what has happened in Europe, where many of these same standards were described to us in our hearing. These standards are feasible and possible, and in the long run they’re good for the tech platforms. 

I’m a former attorney general, I used to enforce consumer product safety laws and I think of this law as kind of a product safety law. For way too long, the internet was regarded as different from all other products, just like probably at the beginning of the automobile age, cars were new, there were no speed limits, no seat belts, no air bags.

Well now we’re going to have guardrails and safe guards for the internet that will enable children and their parents to protect themselves, stop the toxic content that all too often is driven at them, creating those destructive emotional rabbit holes and addictive dark places on the internet that all too often consume our kids. Stop Big Tech from profiting and putting profits over safety and imposing standards that will hopefully engage not only parents and children, but also the tech platforms themselves.

This effort has been truly bipartisan, I look forward to marking up this bill, bringing it to the floor, we have a lot of work to do on other issues but this one is urgent. I believe that parents and children have told us clearly and unequivocally they want to be empowered. There’s a lot of good on the internet – life online has a lot of pleasure and fun, but there are also areas where product safety must be imposed and where power must be given back to children and their parents so they can protect themselves.

So with that let me turn to Senator Blackburn who has been a really steadfast and valuable partner in this effort. We’ve worked together on a bill that I think is going to the floor and I thank her for all that she has done.      

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