Kids Online Safety Act

Protection from Mental Health and Physical Harms: Covered platforms must exercise reasonable care to prevent and mitigate harms such as eating disorders, substance use disorders, suicidal behaviors, and depressive or anxiety disorders related to compulsive usage (Section 102(a)).

Enhanced Privacy and Safety for Minors: Platforms are required to provide safeguards that limit communication with others, restrict public access to a minor's personal data, and restrict the sharing of geolocation (Section 103(a)).

Increased Parental Control: The bill mandates parental tools that allow parents to manage a minor's privacy settings, restrict purchases and financial transactions, and view and restrict the amount of time a minor spends on a platform (Section 103(b)).

Mitigation of Compulsive Usage: Platforms must provide safeguards to limit design features that encourage compulsive usage, such as infinite scrolling or auto playing (Section 103(a)).

Greater Algorithmic Transparency: For platforms using opaque algorithms, the act requires providing users with notice of how the algorithm works and the ability to easily switch to an input-transparent algorithm (Section 202(b)).

Prevention of Harmful Advertising: Covered platforms are prohibited from facilitating the advertising of narcotic drugs, cannabis, tobacco, gambling, or alcohol to individuals they know are minors (Section 103(d)).

Potential Restrictions on Content Access: The duty of care requirements are subject to rules of construction that ensure platforms are not required to prevent minors from deliberately searching for or accessing specific content (Section 102(b)).

Requirements for Data Collection/Verification: While the bill states it does not require affirmative collection of certain data or age gating, it does mandate a study into the technical feasibility of age verification systems at the device or operating system level (Section s 107 and 112(c)).

Algorithmic Constraints: The act regulates how "opaque algorithms" function, which could impact how platforms present content to users unless they comply with specific transparency and opt-out requirements (Section 202(a)).