Sponsors
The bill trades stronger, standardized federal protections for minors and clearer parental controls—and greater enforcement and transparency—against increased compliance and litigation costs, privacy/data-disclosure risks, potential overbroad content restrictions, and reduced local policy flexibility.
Children and teens across the country will face stronger, more consistent protections as platforms are required to limit compulsive features, restrict targeted harmful ads, and adopt safety policies that reduce exposure to exploitation, threats, and harmful substances.
Parents and guardians gain clearer tools and rights—verifiable consent, default protective settings, parental controls, and required notices—so caregivers can limit purchases, screen time, and certain exposures for minors.
Enforcement capacity is strengthened because the FTC gets clearer jurisdiction and remedies and state attorneys general can pursue actions to stop unfair or deceptive practices and recover relief for residents.
Businesses and platforms face substantial new compliance costs (design changes, age/consent systems, audits) and greater litigation risk from overlapping federal and state enforcement; those costs may be passed to users, advertisers, or borne by small operators.
Audits, parental-control tools, and other reporting requirements could increase sensitive data disclosures about minors (and require platforms to enumerate known minors), raising privacy risks and potential misuse of that information.
Platforms may adopt overbroad moderation, automated filters, or treat older teens like younger children to avoid liability, which can block legitimate content (including prevention resources), restrict access for older minors, and frustrate users.
Based on analysis of 22 sections of legislative text.
Requires covered online platforms to adopt protective defaults, parental tools, reporting systems, and annual independent audits to reduce specified harms to minors, with FTC enforcement and federal preemption of related state/local laws.
Introduced December 5, 2025 by Gus Bilirakis · Last progress December 5, 2025
Requires internet-connected consumer platforms that promote user engagement and host user-generated content to adopt protections for minors: safer default settings, parental tools, limits on advertising certain substances to known minors, reporting systems, and annual independent audits submitted to the Federal Trade Commission. Creates a federal preemption of state/local laws on the same subject, treats violations as unfair or deceptive acts enforceable by the FTC, allows state parens patriae suits with notice, and establishes a Department of Commerce Kids Online Safety Council to advise Congress.