US senators unveil a bipartisan bill that bans kids under 13 from joining social media and requires tech companies to get parental consent for teens' accounts
The proposal extends a bipartisan youth-safety legislative arc that had already produced the Kids Online Safety Act’s under-16 safeguards and, weeks earlier, an Arkansas measure tying youth access to age checks and parental approval. It shifts the policy focus from platform features toward whether minors can create accounts at all.
Later coverage shows the idea remained live: the Senate Commerce Committee eventually advanced a federal under-13 access ban, while Australia moved toward a broader under-16 restriction. That progression makes this early bipartisan proposal a meaningful marker in the move toward access-control rules.
First-order effects
The bill puts social-media companies on notice that youth onboarding and teen-account flows could become subject to age screening and verifiable parental authorization if enacted.
Parents and teen users would face a more formal role in account creation, while lawmakers gain a concrete bipartisan vehicle for debating youth-access limits.
Second-order effects
Platforms would have to weigh compliance systems against the risk that stricter sign-up checks exclude legitimate users or create new data-handling obligations.
The proposal raises the policy baseline for rival legislation: safety-tool requirements, such as those in the earlier Kids Online Safety Act, can be paired with outright age-based access limits.
Third-order effects
If such proposals keep advancing, youth online-safety policy may increasingly regulate access and identity verification rather than relying only on platform moderation commitments.
That direction could make age assurance a recurring compliance layer across consumer internet services, though the eventual scope depends on what legislation is enacted and how it is implemented.
The trend: This is one data point in the shift from child-safety design mandates toward age-gated access regulation for online platforms.
NEWS: I just introduced an important bill with three of my colleagues @brianschatz @SenTomCotton @SenKatieBritt who are also parents of young kids. Our bill: - prohibits kids under 13 from being on social media - requires parental consent and prohibits algorithms for kids 13-17 h…
Just as parents safeguard their kids from threats in the real world, they need the opportunity to protect their children online. Our bill will put parents back in control of what their kids experience online. https://www.cotton.senate.gov/ ...
@misfitsguide ... The full bill text is available here: https://www.schatz.senate.gov/ ... FWIW, the bill itself is much more clear than that vague description. It would prevent the use of minors' personal info to power algorithmic recommendations. Some clarification needed but t…
Now is the time to act. Our children are depending on us. The CDC found last year that 1 in 3 high school girls has seriously considered suicide. And between 2011 and 2019, the rate of depression among teenagers doubled. Enough is enough. https://www.youtube.com/... https://twitt…
The ironic result is this will lead to less parental control as they can no longer make marginal decisions based on the relative maturity of their own teen on how and when they use social media
While there are certainly costs to social media usage for teens (and everyone else), there are also immense benefits in online connections and access to information. Excluding teens could actually make social isolation worse and restrict teens' access to resources to help them
“Just as parents safeguard their kids from threats in the real world,” Senator? You mean like the leading cause of death for kids? You mean like guns, Senator? You don't. You want to regulate Tik Tok videos but not AR-15s. Despicable. Indefensible. Corrupt. https://twitter.com/..…
Cotton calls the age verification issue a “red herring.” Senators making clear they think current age verification regimes are inadequate and what they would be imposing is not an unreasonable ask https://twitter.com/...
In conclusion, legislators need to reconsider these children's online safety bills before they figuratively “throw the baby out with the bathwater” and end up effectively excluding teens from social media altogether
Asked whether there's GOP concern this could be overregulation, Cotton & Britt say there's support for giving parents more control/choice in their kids digital lives
“There's a direct correlation between agitating kids and satisfying investors,” @brianschatz and bipartisan group of senators unveil a bill to bar kids under 13 from social media, and make other changes to protect teens from the platforms ill effects https://twitter.com/...
A bipartisan group of senators have unveiled a sweeping bill to ban social media for kids under 13 and impose age verification and parental consent requirements for other users: https://www.cnn.com/...