Sponsors
The bill strengthens federal protections and enforcement for children’s online privacy and reduces manipulative design and data use targeting minors, but it centralizes authority, raises compliance and litigation costs for businesses (potentially passed to consumers), and leaves gaps for older teens while limiting state and local flexibility.
Children and their parents gain stronger limits on data-driven design and use of minors' personal data (e.g., bans or limits on infinite scroll, autoplay, rewards, push notifications, and use of kids' data for market/product research), reducing exposure to manipulative design and targeted profiling.
The FTC is given clearer jurisdiction and stronger enforcement tools (treatment of violations as unfair/deceptive, ability to seek penalties) and can coordinate with state attorneys general, improving federal enforcement capacity to stop and remedy consumer harms to minors.
A single nationwide federal standard immediately preempts conflicting state and local laws, creating uniform obligations for platforms and simplifying compliance for businesses that operate across state lines.
Covered platforms and connected businesses will face increased compliance costs, implementation burdens (age-verification, parental-consent systems), and higher litigation/exposure to damages, costs that could be passed on to users, advertisers, and small publishers.
Narrow age definitions leave older teens and young adults (particularly 17– and 18‑year‑olds) without the same tailored protections, creating a protection gap for vulnerable youth.
Federal preemption prevents states and localities from enacting stronger or more tailored protections, which could reduce safeguards in jurisdictions that previously offered higher standards or wanted local responses.
Based on analysis of 7 sections of legislative text.
Introduced November 21, 2025 by Mariannette Miller-Meeks · Last progress November 21, 2025
Prohibits publicly available online platforms that host user-generated content and use personal data for ads or recommendations from doing product- or market-research on users they know are children (under 13). Research on teens (13–16) is allowed only with verifiable parental consent. The bill defines covered platforms and “design features” (like infinite scroll, rewards, auto-play, notifications, and appearance-altering filters) that encourage minor engagement, sets the FTC as the enforcement agency, gives state attorneys general authority to sue on behalf of residents, preserves COPPA protections, preempts state and local laws on the same subject, and becomes effective 90 days after enactment.