Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti led a bipartisan coalition of 31 state attorneys general in sending a letter to Congressional leadership on Monday urging the passage of U.S. Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Richard Blumenthal’s (D-CT) Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) before the end of the year.
KOSA, which passed the Senate earlier this year by a 91-3 vote, seeks to “protect minors from online harms” by requiring social media companies to “take reasonable measures” to “prevent and mitigate” children from being harmed while using their platforms, including through sexual exploitation or online bullying.
The amended bill passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee last month and awaits further consideration.
The attorneys general specifically pointed to three provisions of the legislation that would “enhance online protections for minors” at a time when multiple state attorneys general offices have launched investigations and lawsuits of their own against major social media platforms for the targeting of underage users.
Those provisions include KOSA’s requirement that platforms automatically enable their strongest safety protections for minors by default; allow underage users and their parents to disable certain design features and algorithmic recommendations; and provide parents tools to report dangerous content.
“We encourage Congress to act to aid our state-level efforts,” the attorneys general said.
“The states have been consistently acting to vigorously protect kids from online dangers using their existing consumer protection authority, and we look forward to further collaboration,” the attorneys general added.
Tennessee’s Skrmetti was joined in sending the letter to Congressional leadership by the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, and Wyoming.
“As the chief legal officers of our states, we’ve seen firsthand how social media companies prioritize profits over our kids’ safety,” Skrmetti said in a statement.
“While our offices individually pursue investigations and lawsuits against platforms like Meta and TikTok, we are glad to support the Senate’s bipartisan effort to empower our federal enforcement partners. KOSA provides additional tools to protect our children’s mental health from the negative effects of social media,” Skrmetti added.
The day after Skrmetti and the coalition sent the letter to congressional leaders, Blackburn commended the effort, saying, “I applaud Attorney General Skrmetti for leading this effort to help protect our nation’s children from Big Tech companies seeking to profit from their exploitation.”
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Kids on Tablets” by Verkeorg CC2.0.
