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On August 5, 2026, the Senate Commerce Committee advanced an amended Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and three related bills. That was a committee action—not passage by the full Senate and not enactment. The House had separately passed its KIDS Act package, which is not the same bill as the Senate’s amended KOSA.
What cleared the Senate hurdle?
The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee advanced amended S. 1748, the Kids Online Safety Act, by voice vote on August 5, 2026. It also advanced the Youth AI Privacy Act, the CHATBOT Act, and the Children’s Artificial Intelligence Toy Safety Act by voice vote. The committee release reported no vote counts for those four measures.
The SCREEN Act had a separate committee vote of 15–13. The committee said a revote was required to comply with Senate in-person attendance rules. That tally was for the SCREEN Act, not KOSA.
An earlier version of KOSA received a 91–3 vote in the Senate during the previous Congress, according to remarks prepared by Senate Commerce Chairman Ted Cruz. That earlier vote does not mean the current, amended bill passed the Senate in 2026.
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Are the House KIDS Act and Senate KOSA the same proposal?
No. The House passed H.R. 7757, the KIDS Act package, on June 29, 2026. It was received in the Senate and referred to the Commerce Committee on July 13. The Senate committee’s amended KOSA is a separate text. A Congressional Research Service comparison updated August 24, 2026, identifies an important difference: the Senate KOSA includes a duty-of-care section, while the House KIDS Act’s “Kids Online Safety” section does not.
| Issue | House KIDS Act, H.R. 7757 | Senate amended KOSA, S. 1748 |
|---|---|---|
| Status in 2026 | Passed the House June 29; referred to the Senate Commerce Committee July 13. Not enacted. | Advanced by the Senate Commerce Committee August 5. Not passed by the full Senate or enacted. |
| Approach described in the CRS comparison | Requires covered platforms to establish reasonable policies addressing listed harms and provide specified safeguards and tools. | Includes a duty-of-care section; the CRS comparison distinguishes it from the House bill on this point. |
| Platform safeguards and user tools | Proposed safeguards involve communications, recommendation systems, compulsive-use features, and geolocation; the proposal also includes parental tools, messaging controls, reporting channels, notices, and audits. | The committee chairman described KOSA as setting guardrails for platforms used by minors, including social media, online video games, messaging apps, and video streamers. The available comparison does not establish matching details for every House provision. |
| Age verification and child privacy | The House text includes SCREEN Act age-verification language and COPPA 2.0 provisions. It would change COPPA’s definition of a child to someone under 14 and extend various privacy provisions to teens. | The specific age-verification and data-handling details are not stated in the cited CRS comparison. |
The House proposal’s obligations apply according to its definitions of covered platforms and minors; they should not be read as rules for every service or every young person. The House text’s COPPA changes are proposals, not changes to current law.
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What would the other committee-approved bills do?
The four measures advanced by voice vote address different subjects. The committee chairman’s August 5 prepared remarks described the proposals this way:
- CHATBOT Act: Would require family accounts, parental consent before teen accounts, protective defaults, and steps addressing obscene output and suicide-related interactions.
- Youth AI Privacy Act: Would restrict advertising to minors on chatbots and limit the retention and use of chatbot memory.
- Children’s Artificial Intelligence Toy Safety Act: Directs a study and a joint FTC/CPSC action plan. It is not a consumer safety standard currently in force.
These descriptions reflect the chairman’s account of proposed measures, not requirements already imposed on companies.
Why are civil-liberties groups objecting?
The ACLU opposed the House KIDS Act in a June 29, 2026 statement. It argues that broad requirements to prevent specified harms could encourage platforms to remove lawful material useful to young people, including addiction-recovery, mental-health, and gender-affirming-care resources. The ACLU presents this as a risk of the bill, not as a proven outcome or court finding.
The ACLU also warns that age verification could require collecting significant personal information, expose more data to breach risks, and make access harder for adults who cannot verify their age. Its senior policy counsel Jenna Leventoff said: “Censorship and invasive age verification measures will not keep children safe,”
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Those are the organization’s predictions and objections. The materials cited here do not establish that the proposed measures would produce those effects, nor do they provide an independent outcome statistic showing whether the bills would improve child safety.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What is the case supporters make?
Supporters frame the proposals as a way to give parents more control and protect children from serious online harms. In prepared remarks, Cruz said: “Online platforms offer children opportunities to learn, create, and communicate. But they can also expose children to grave harms.” That statement sets out the sponsor’s rationale; it is not evidence of the bills’ eventual effects.
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What is the dispute over the House package?
Senators Maria Cantwell and Richard Blumenthal argued that the House package removes KOSA’s duty-of-care standard, covers fewer platforms and harms, and could preempt state-law cases. These are the senators’ criticisms of the House bill, not findings about how a court would interpret or apply it. The CRS comparison independently identifies the difference in duty-of-care provisions, but the broader claims about coverage and state-law effects remain attributed critiques.
What happens next, and what is law now?
The verified actions described here are House passage of H.R. 7757 and Senate committee advancement of amended KOSA and related measures. Committee advancement is one step in the legislative process; it does not make a proposal federal law. None of the measures covered in this article is established here as enacted law, and the committee action should not be described as the Senate passing KOSA.
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