In an article for Real Clear Policy, Ashley McGuire urges the House to pass critical legislation to protect children from widespread online threats and continued exploitation by Big Tech before the end of this year’s legislative session. In her article, “Pass the Kids Online Safety Act Before It’s Too Late,” she writes:
“Mason Bogard was 15 when he told his parents he loved them and went upstairs to take a shower and head to bed. Less than an hour later, they found him dead on the floor of his bedroom, a belt around his neck.
Mason had attempted the viral Tik Tok “choking challenge” where kids choke themselves on video and then pass out. Many are dying instead.
Congress has an opportunity to fix this with the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which sailed through the Senate 91-3, but time is almost out. If the bill does not pass the House of Representatives next week, it will die….
KOSA would establish a “duty of care” – a legal term that would require tech companies to enact commonsense safety measures on platforms used by minors and “prevent and mitigate” harms to children like bullying, promoting things like suicide and eating disorders, and advertising for age-inappropriate things like alcohol. It would also, perhaps most significantly, require social media companies to put default privacy and safety settings on kids’ accounts and disable addictive product features like autoplay.
In short, passing KOSA would mean no more legal protections for the targeting of boys like Mason with things like “choking challenges.”
