Social media platforms must now protect kids from addictive design and disclose their practices.

What it does

This bill requires social media platforms, online video games, and video streaming services used by minors to implement safety features—including controls on addictive design, parental oversight tools, and reporting mechanisms for harm—and to conduct annual audits disclosing how they affect children's safety and time spent online. Platforms must prevent compulsive usage, protect against sexual exploitation and drug marketing, and provide minors and parents with easy-to-use privacy and engagement controls by default.

Why we flagged it

The bill's operative mechanism is a comprehensive duty-of-care standard requiring platforms to prevent foreseeable harms to minors through design changes, safeguards, parental tools, and transparency audits. This is regulatory accountability legislation, not a tax or subsidy measure.

What the text implies

• Age verification study (Section 107) may lead to device-level age gating, raising privacy and surveillance concerns if implemented without strong data minimization safeguards.
• Platforms may respond by restricting minor access entirely rather than implementing safeguards, potentially reducing minors' ability to access legitimate educational and social content.
• Compliance costs may disproportionately burden smaller platforms and startups, consolidating market power among large incumbents with resources to audit and implement controls.
• The 'reasonably foreseeable' harm standard is fact-intensive and may generate litigation over what harms platforms should have anticipated, creating regulatory uncertainty.
• Personalized recommendation system restrictions may reduce content discovery for minors while not addressing underlying engagement-driven business models.

Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.

Who it affects

Ordinary citizens—particularly parents and children—gain enforceable rights to privacy controls, parental oversight, protection against addictive design, and transparency into how platforms operate. Platforms bear compliance costs and potential liability, but these are accountability measures, not restrictions on citizens' rights. The bill does not ban speech or access; it requires platforms to offer protective defaults and disclose practices.

Who stands to gain

• Third-party audit firms (required annual independent audits)
• Age verification technology providers (if device-level systems are developed)
• Parental control software vendors (platforms may contract with third parties to provide safeguards)
• Legal and compliance consulting firms (platforms will need expertise to implement and defend complia

Named in the bill

Federal Trade Commission (FTC), State attorneys general, Covered platforms (social media, online video games, video streaming services), Parents and minors (beneficiaries), Kids Online Safety Council, Secretary of Commerce, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Independent third-party auditors

Where it stands

76 cosponsors: 42 Republicans, 33 Democrats, 1 Independents.

• May 14, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
• May 14, 2025 — Referred to Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.”
• Aug 5, 2026 — Reported out of committee · Congress.gov: “Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Ordered to be reported with an amendment in the nature of…”

Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.

Money around this bill

59 lobbying clients named this bill on 79 disclosure filings across 3 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $96,320,909 in lobbying spend. A filing names 12 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.

More lobbying clients named this bill than 99% of bills with at least one filing.

Marsha Blackburn, the sponsor, reported $133,620 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.

• Chamber of Commerce of the U.S.A. — $54,660,000 on 3 filings
• Google Client Services LLC — $6,920,000 on 2 filings
• Meta Platforms, Inc. and Various Subsidiaries — $5,990,000 on 1 filing
• Ctia-the Wireless Association — $3,640,000 on 1 filing
• American Association for Justice — $3,610,000 on 2 filings

Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 23, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.