The bipartisan Kids Off Social Media Act (KOSMA) was scheduled for consideration this morning by the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee. As the name suggests, the goal of KOSMA is to restrict the access of minors to social media, which lawmakers often assume causes mental health issues. KOSMA, of course, is not the only bill targeting social media. Like the rest of them, KOSMA is somewhat of a mixed bag: it rightly recognizes age differences and deemphasizes age verification, but unfortunately still relies on fundamental misconceptions about social media, addiction, and mental illness.
KOSMA would prohibit children under the age of thirteen from creating social media accounts and require their data to be immediately deleted upon detection. It would also forbid “addicting” algorithms for teenagers under eighteen. The bill also includes the Eyes on the Board Act, which would require schools to block social media websites on their networks.
While no bill on a topic this contentious will make everyone happy, there are some positive aspects of KOSMA compared to its peers. Fortunately, KOSMA does not treat all minors the same. It recognizes differences between kids and teenagers and imposes different requirements on each age band. While not a perfect cutoff, easing restrictions on teenagers compared to minors under thirteen is better than the alternative of treating all minors the same.
Unfortunately, policymakers take the banding approach in the wrong direction by banning social media for some and restricting it for others. The American Psychological Association (APA) released social media guidelines, which, among other suggestions, argued that young teens and preteens benefit from using social media with significant guidance from their parents when they are young and then having more autonomy as they get older. Rather than imposing blanket bans and one-size-fits-all requirements, policymakers should instead work toward policy reforms that encourage parental guidance of social media activity.
KOSMA also takes positive steps to clarify rules about age verification and privacy. KOSMA specifies that the law is not to be interpreted in a way that would require age verification or collection of additional data. Instead, it would create a standard where the law applies when it could be reasonably implied based on the totality of the circumstances that a user is a minor. Essentially this means that if the company discovers the user is underage through information gathered through normal business operations, they will have to delete the account and data or stop providing algorithmic recommendations.
Ideally, policymakers would table this discussion until more research linking social media to addiction or mental health decline. But KOSMA does provide more flexibility in how these rules are implemented than bills that explicitly require flawed age verification methods and could better protect the privacy of users depending on how platforms approach it. There are legitimate concerns about how feasible this is without age verification, but trying to address the problem without outright mandating these methods is a step in the right direction.
Although KOSMA may be a marginal improvement in some areas, in others it falls short of standards, most notably in the underlying assumptions regarding the relationship between mental illness and social media platforms. Despite the very real mental health crisis among young people, the evidence linking social media use and declining mental health is mixed and weak.
Unfortunately, KOSMA and other bills like it rely on speculative evidence to justify sweeping regulatory increases. But the flip side is that KOSMA does differ from similar efforts in some important and beneficial ways.
Trey Price is a policy analyst with the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit education and research organization. For more information about the Institute, visit us at www.TheAmericanConsumer.Org or follow us on X @ConsumerPal.