A child safety bill passed the Senate but never became law

The short answer

The Kids Online Safety Act would require platforms likely to be used by minors to design more carefully around risks like severe harassment and mental health harm, and to give parents and users certain safeguards and reporting tools. It passed the Senate by a wide margin in July 2024 but did not become law, because the House did not take it up before that Congress ended. It has been reintroduced and, as of the most recent committee action on record, has not passed either chamber again.

What the evidence says

Senator Blumenthal introduced the bill as S.1409 in the 118th Congress on 2 May 2023; the Senate Commerce Committee reported it favourably in December 2023, but the bill never received its own floor vote. Instead, its text, combined with a companion bill updating children's privacy law, was attached as an amendment to a separate, unrelated vehicle bill, S.2073, and the Senate agreed to that amendment by a 91 to 3 roll call on 30 July 2024, according to the bill's action record and the Senate's own roll call record of that vote. The Senate sent a message to the House the next day. The House did not pass the measure before the 118th Congress ended, so it did not become law. As reintroduced in the current Congress under the number S.1748, the bill's summary describes it as requiring covered platforms, meaning social media, games, messaging apps and streaming services likely used by people under 17, to exercise reasonable care designing features that increase minors' use, provide data protections and parental tools, let users report harm, bar market research on under-13s without consent and on 13-to-17s without parental consent, and let users switch off algorithmic feeds. The Commerce Committee ordered it reported with an amended substitute as its most recent action.

For context

A large Senate vote is not enactment; a bill must pass both chambers in the same form and be signed to become law, and this one has not. Supporters and critics disagree, in the public record, about how a duty-of-care standard would be enforced and what it would mean for content moderation; that disagreement is part of why the bill has been reworked and reintroduced rather than moving straight to a House vote. Nothing here indicates when, or whether, either chamber will act again.

A practical next step

If this bill matters to your family, it may be more useful to track what platforms already do voluntarily, such as teen account defaults, than to wait on legislation with a genuinely uncertain timeline.

• Which of this bill's specific requirements, like a harm-reporting tool or an algorithm opt-out, does a platform your child uses already offer?
• Do you know how your family currently handles account settings for the risks this bill targets, such as harassment or excessive engagement design?
• Would you want to read the bill's current text yourself before forming a view on it?

The act's long path, one chamber, a different vehicle bill, then reintroduction, is a reminder that a widely reported vote is not the end of a legislative story.