Sponsors (23)
The bill gives parents and teens a clearer legal pathway to delegate account controls to vetted safety apps and strengthens federal oversight, but the benefits are constrained by coverage thresholds, implementation delays, privacy/security tradeoffs from increased data transfers, compliance costs, and legal uncertainty that may limit practical protections for many children.
Parents and children (13+) gain a clear ability to delegate account management to vetted third‑party safety apps, giving families a new, legally backed route to control privacy, content, and marketing settings for minors.
Children and parents can pursue enforcement and remedies against large platforms (via FTC authority) and retain state consumer‑protection claims, creating both federal and state avenues to challenge violations.
The bill creates clearer government standards and oversight (FTC guidance, biannual compliance assessments, authentication procedures), which should standardize how large platforms and vetted third‑party safety software operate.
Many children may remain unprotected in practice because parts of the law are limited or delayed: some provisions are non‑binding or contingent on agency guidance, platforms can evade coverage by tweaking features, and the large‑platform thresholds exclude numerous services children use.
Allowing delegation and frequent transfers to third‑party safety apps increases the volume of sensitive child data in motion and raises privacy and breach risks — and some third‑party tools may themselves collect or misuse children's data.
The bill creates legal ambiguity and liability risk: limits like 'solely to protect the child' are vague, platforms receive broad liability protection (outside FTC actions), and enforcement actions or rules may produce uncertain speech/product impacts.
Based on analysis of 7 sections of legislative text.
Requires very large social platforms to provide FTC‑registered third‑party safety software with real‑time APIs and frequent machine‑readable child data transfers when parents/children delegate account management.
Requires very large social media platforms to give parents (and children ages 13+) the ability to delegate control of a child’s account to registered third‑party safety software via real‑time APIs and to allow frequent machine‑readable transfers of a child’s user data; the Federal Trade Commission enforces the rule and must issue guidance before the law takes effect. The law defines covered platforms, who counts as a third‑party safety software provider, notification and data‑security requirements, and preempts state laws that would force platforms to create similar APIs.
Official title: To require large social media platform providers to create, maintain, and make available to third-party safety software providers a set of real-time application programming interfaces, through which a child or a parent or legal guardian of a child may delegate permission to a third-party safety software provider to manage the online interactions, content, and account settings of such child on the large social media platform on the same terms as such child, and for other purposes.
Introduced April 3, 2025 by Debbie Wasserman Schultz · Last progress April 3, 2025