National Center on Sexual Exploitation Urges Passage of Kids Online Safety Act and Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act
WASHINGTON, DC (July 26, 2022) – The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) is calling on Congress to pass the Kids Online Safety Act (S 3663) and Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (S 1628), both designed to further protect children online, and which are being marked up by the Senate Commerce Committee on July 27.
“The Kids Online Safety Act is an excellent bipartisan bill that creates a ‘default to safety’ standard for online platforms, one of the main safeguards we have been advocating for with tech platforms. Tech companies can and should do more to protect its youngest users given the potential for harm and exploitation on these platforms,” said Dawn Hawkins, CEO of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation.
The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) creates a duty of care that a covered platform must act in the best interests of a minor who uses it and includes a duty to prevent and mitigate physical, emotional, developmental, material harms. KOSA provides families with the tools, safeguards, and transparency they need to protect against threats to children’s health and well-being online. The bill also ensures that parents and policymakers can assess whether social media platforms are taking meaningful steps to address risks to kids.
The Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act will strengthen protections for children and include minors up to age 16 in those protections from the collection, use and disclosure of personal information.
“Both of these bills have the potential to significantly improve young people’s wellbeing by transforming the digital environment for children and teens. Congress must solidify its commitment to the youngest generations by instituting these protections,” Hawkins concluded.
About National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE)
Founded in 1962, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) is the leading national non-partisan organization exposing the links between all forms of sexual exploitation such as child sexual abuse, prostitution, sex trafficking and the public health harms of pornography.
