(Bloomberg) -- A key Senate committee on Wednesday advanced a package of bills aimed at improving children's safety online, teeing up a showdown with the House over whether to hold Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google liable for harms done to minors on their social media platforms.
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The bills passed the Senate Commerce Committee unanimously, marking the panel's most serious effort this year to regulate social media platforms as they face growing legal scrutiny over their impact on minors. The package would also require artificial intelligence companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic PBC to create new safeguards for children using their products by implementing privacy safeguards and creating "family accounts" to allow parents to manage their child's access and usage of AI chatbots.
"The era of Big Tech profiting off of our children is over," said Republican Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn, the lead co-sponsor of the Kids Online Safety Act. "Congress is moving forward to make certain that they have to accept responsibility for the foreseeable harms that their products cause."
There are still significant hurdles ahead for the children's online safety bills. The House in June passed a version of the legislation that stops short of demands in the Senate to impose a legal requirement on tech companies to "exercise reasonable care" to prevent harms to minors.
Republican and Democratic senators derided the House effort as inadequate, while lawmakers in the House insisted their version is a significant step forward in the push to protect children online.
The Senate bill includes a "duty of care" provision that would hold tech companies legally accountable for promoting harmful content to minors. That would include material facilitating eating disorders, substance abuse, and sexual exploitation.
The Senate overwhelmingly voted to pass a similar version of the Kids Online Safety Act in 2024 on a 91-3 vote.
Lobbyists representing the social media platforms are pushing back on the Senate's version of the Kids Online Safety Act, arguing it would enable the government to curtail free speech online.
"Real safety comes from equipping parents with tools and partnering with industry to root out bad actors — not from handing federal bureaucrats a bigger say over what kids can read," said Amy Bos, vice president of government affairs at tech trade group NetChoice.