KIDS Act

H.R. 7757, the Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act, creates a broad federal framework for protecting minors (people under 17) online. It covers websites and apps where users share content, social media, messaging tools, online video games, and AI chatbots. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state attorneys general would enforce most of the rules. Title I requires commercial sites that mainly show sexual material harmful to minors to use age-verification technology to keep minors from seeing that content. These sites must use commercially available tools to check age, limit data use for age checks, secure that data, and explain their practices. The federal rules preempt state laws that separately require such age-verification systems, while leaving general state consumer protection, tort, and criminal laws in place. Title II sets standards for “covered platforms” such as major social media and similar apps that use engagement-boosting design features and personal data. Platforms must adopt reasonable policies to reduce certain harms to minors, including threats of serious violence, sexual exploitation, illegal drug, tobacco, cannabis, gambling, and alcohol activity, and financial harm from deceptive practices. They must offer in-product safeguards for minors such as tools to limit who can contact them, reduce compulsive-use design features, control geolocation sharing, and opt out of personalized recommendation systems. Platforms must default these safeguards and parental tools to the most protective settings for known children and minors, provide parents with tools to manage settings, purchases, and time limits, and notify minors when parental tools are active. Title II also requires platforms to maintain reporting tools and a contact point for harms to minors, respond within set timeframes, and provide clear notices about safeguards, parental tools, and advertising disclosures (for example, when other users are paid to endorse products). Platforms may not advertise certain illegal or age-restricted products (like narcotic drugs, tobacco, cannabis, gambling, and alcohol) to known minors. Large covered platforms must undergo independent annual audits focused on minors’ use, safeguards, harms reports, and data practices, submit audit results to the FTC, and publish parts of the results. The title clarifies that it does not itself require age-gating or age verification but preempts state laws that conflict with these federal provisions. Subtitle B of Title II (Safe Messaging for Kids Act) bans ephemeral messaging features for known minors and bans any direct messaging for children under 13 on covered platforms. For teens, it requires platforms to offer parental direct-messaging controls by default, allowing parents to approve or block contacts, disable messaging, hide profiles from search, and manage who can message their teen, without reducing other features except as needed to enforce these controls. Providers must take reasonable steps to prevent easy workarounds and must respect strong encryption while still trying to meet these requirements. States are limited from passing conflicting rules about ephemeral or direct messaging for minors. Subtitle C (SPY Kids Act) restricts platforms’ market and product-focused research on known minors. Platforms may conduct such research on minors only to improve privacy, security, transparency, or safety, or when needed to follow federal or state law. The subtitle clarifies that platforms may still process data to measure advertising or content performance and preempts conflicting state laws in this research area, again leaving general consumer protection and similar state laws intact. Title III (Safer GAMING Act) targets interactive online video games that allow communication. Game providers must give parents of known minor users easy-to-use communication safeguards that are on by default, set to the most restrictive level unless a parent loosens them. They must also offer tools to prevent a minor’s profile from being recommended to adults, to limit purchases and financial transactions, and to cap time spent in the game. Parents may be given a single interface to manage communication limits and other safeguards across games or tools, and minors must be notified when such controls are active. States are preempted from regulating these specific safeguards in ways that conflict with the federal rules. Title IV (SAFE BOTs Act) covers AI chatbots provided directly to consumers. Chatbot providers that know a user is a minor may not falsely state that the chatbot is a licensed professional. They must clearly tell minors that the chatbot is an AI system and not a person and must show crisis hotline information when minors raise suicide-related topics. Chatbots must be set up so that, after three hours of continuous use, they prompt the minor to take a break. Providers must have reasonable policies to address minors’ access through chatbots to sexual material harmful to minors, gambling, and the distribution, sale, or use of narcotic drugs, tobacco, or alcohol. The title states that chatbots do not have to block access to information that helps prevent or reduce those harms, and it broadly preempts conflicting state laws while preserving general state consumer protection and criminal laws. Title V focuses on research, education, and best practices. It orders the FTC, with health agencies, to study minors’ use of social media, including data collection, algorithmic use of that data, targeted ads, usage patterns by age, mental health effects, and possible harms and benefits of extended use, and to report to Congress within three years. Another study must examine how minors obtain fentanyl via social media, the role of platform design, current responses by law enforcement and platforms, and recommendations to reduce access. The FTC must also review industry safety tools, education, labels, and privacy settings for minors, and report on the effectiveness of these tools and recommendations. Title V further directs a four-year National Institutes of Health study on chatbots’ effects on minors’ mental health and requires a public report and recommendations. It updates an existing federal online safety education program to run nationwide awareness campaigns, share best practices, and coordinate information among agencies, schools, nonprofits, industry, and law enforcement. The FTC must also create and publish educational resources for parents, educators, and minors on safe chatbot use, modeled on its existing “Youville” program. Finally, Title V creates a temporary Kids Internet Safety Partnership in the Department of Commerce. This partnership will coordinate with agencies and a broad set of stakeholders to identify online risks and benefits for minors, develop evidence-based best practices for age-appropriate safeguards and tools, publish regular reports on safeguards’ use and effectiveness, and publish a playbook for providers on age verification methods, design features, parental tools, default privacy settings, reporting systems, use of third-party safety tools, and limits or opt-outs related to recommendation systems and chatbots. The partnership sunsets five years after it is established. Title VI sets enforcement, court, and interpretation rules. The FTC treats violations of the Act as unfair or deceptive practices and may use all of its usual enforcement powers; state attorneys general may also bring civil actions on behalf of their residents, with coordination rules when federal actions are pending. Any constitutional challenge to the Act or to actions under it must be filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit within set time limits. The Act includes detailed rules of construction to protect First Amendment speech, allow reasonable security and anti-crime measures, preserve encryption and Section 230, avoid forcing extra data collection or indefinite data storage, and avoid expanding or limiting other existing child privacy laws. A severability clause ensures that if any part is found unconstitutional, the rest remains in force. Most provisions would take effect one year after enactment, with some subtitles and sections having shorter or different timelines.