Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond has called for Congress to pass the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) before the end of the calendar year.
Drummond, along with 31 other state attorneys general, have highlighted the urgent need to protect children from the harm associated with mental health and social media.
“Our youth are spending untold hours a day on social media platforms without proper safeguards to protect them from toxic content and addictive algorithms,” said Drummond. “There are commonsense measures that need to be taken to protect our children from harm when they are online.”
The following are the key provisions of KOSA:
- Mandatory Default Safety Settings: Requiring social media platforms to automatically apply safety protections to the accounts of minors instead of putting them behind opt-ins
- Addiction Prevention: Allowing parents and young users to deactivate manipulative design features that keep kids scrolling
- Parental Empowerment: Providing guardians with new tools to identify harmful behaviors and report dangerous content
This push for federal legislation comes as multiple states have opened investigations and lawsuits into platforms such as Meta and TikTok regarding their alleged targeting of underage users.
You can read the letter signed by 31 state attorneys general across the country here.
