Bill to Protect Kids Online Could Buoy a Far-Right Push Against Trans Youth

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When the Senate voted overwhelmingly Tuesday in support of the most significant new online safety rules for children in decades, it delivered a major victory for parents who blame the ills of social media for injuring — and in some cases killing — their kids. 

But civil rights activists and free speech groups warn that the legislation, dubbed the Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act — which combines two previous bills on students’ internet use that failed to gain traction — could lead to censorship of politically divisive subjects online and prohibit minors, particularly transgender youth, from accessing vital information.

Ahead of the Senate’s bipartisan 91-3 vote, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, celebrated what he called “a momentous day” that would soon lead to “perhaps the most important updates in decades to federal laws” designed to protect kids on the internet. The rules ban tech companies from feeding targeted ads to kids, collecting teens’ personal information and allowing young users to opt out of personalized algorithm recommendations.

“Too many kids experience relentless online bullying, too many kids have their personal data collected and then used nefariously,” Schumer said in support of the bill. “And sadly, sadly, too many families have lost kids because of what happened to them on social media.”

The legislation now moves to the House, where it faces an uncertain future when representatives return from a six-week summer recess Sept. 9. If passed, the Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act could fundamentally reshape the online experiences for young people — and everyone.

Despite the legislation’s overwhelming support in Washington, it has faced opposition from critics across the political spectrum who argue the bipartisan bill’s “duty of care” provision could be used to curtail, or at least chill, constitutionally protected speech. Under the rules, tech companies would be required to take “reasonable” measures in their products’ design to mitigate harms including cyberbullying, eating disorders, the promotion of drugs and sexual exploitation. The provision, these critics argue, paves the way for a new censorship tool that lawmakers could potentially weaponize to thwart teens’ access to politically divisive subjects, including content designed to help transgender youth.

“The government should not be standing between youth and what kinds of content they can access any more so than they should be standing between youth and their doctors and their health care decisions,” said Dara Adkison, the executive director of the nonprofit TransOhio, which offers resources to transgender youth, on a Zoom call Tuesday. On the call, Adkison joined other advocates, including those from the groups Fight for the Future and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, to outline their opposition to the bill. 

Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union rallied some 300 youth in a lobbying push, where they met with lawmakers on Capitol Hill to voice their objections to the bill. During Tuesday’s call, Jenna Leventoff, the civil rights group’s senior policy counsel, said the rule could have a detrimental impact on students who are “naturally curious” by placing limits on their ability to learn. 

Civil and LGBTQ+ rights advocates aren’t alone in crying foul. In a post on X last week, the anti-abortion group Students for Life Action said the legislation offered “broad powers and vague definitions” that could prevent young people from speaking out in opposition to abortion. 

“Without concrete definitions, those targeted by a weaponized federal government will almost always include Pro-Life Americans,” the group posted on the social media site. Empowering the Federal Trade Commission to “decide what constitutes potentially stressful or allegedly harmful messaging,” the group posted, “will lead to more abuse” of power. 

Targeting transgender content online

Advocates working on behalf of transgender children, however, have perhaps been most vocal in their opposition — and statements from leading Republicans have fed the fire. 

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee who co-sponsored the act alongside Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, has suggested a desire to use the rules to restrict youth access to online content about transgender people. In an interview with the Family Policy Alliance, the lobbying arm of the prominent evangelical group Focus on the Family, Blackburn said that “protecting minor children from the transgender in this culture and that influence” is among the top issues that conservatives should act on. 

“I’ve got the Kids Online Safety Act that I think we’re going to end up getting through, probably this summer,” Blackburn said in the 2023 interview promoting the legislation’s duty of care provision. “[The internet] is where children are being indoctrinated. They’re hearing things at school and then they’re getting onto YouTube to watch a video, and all of a sudden this comes to them.” 

In a statement Tuesday, Blackburn said the bill “is a major step forward in protecting children” and will “save countless innocent lives from being exploited online.” 

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, has similarly endorsed the legislation as a strategy to block materials designed for LGBTQ+ youth. In 2023, the group posted on X that “keeping trans content away from children keeps them safe.” 

Among the bill’s supporters is the nonprofit Fairplay for Kids, a nonpartisan group that has amplified the voices of grieving parents whose children were subjected to cyberbullying and online child sexual exploitation.

Josh Golin, the group’s executive director, said in a statement Tuesday that the legislation would force Big Tech to end business practices that have “fueled a mental health crisis and cost the lives of countless children around the country.” 

The group has sought to distance its efforts from “transphobic and homophobic activists threatening to weaponize” the legislation, noting that it supported an amendment to the proposal that was made to help satisfy LGBTQ+ advocates’ concerns. A previous version of the legislation empowered state attorneys general to decide what types of content is harmful to children, while the amended bill empowers the Federal Trade Commission to enforce its provisions. The changes satisfied some LGTBQ+ groups, including​​ The Trevor Project, but failed to rein in the legislation’s most vocal critics. 

‘More harm than good’

The Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act comes amid bipartisan accusations that social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok — with algorithms designed to keep users hooked and coming back for more — have harmed children’s well-being and, in some cases, pushed young people to suicide. It follows congressional testimony by two Meta whistleblowers who accused the social media company of knowing that apps like Instagram fueled dissatisfaction about body image and other insecurities among its younger users, but maintained a “see no evil, hear no evil” culture and did nothing to mitigate its harms.

Research on social media’s effects on youth well-being remains a point of contention. In a recent analysis, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine found there wasn’t enough evidence to conclude that social media use impacts adolescent well-being at the population level. Social media sites can expose children to online harassment and fringe ideas, researchers noted, while uplifting other children by fostering a sense of community. 

The bill passed by the Senate on Tuesday combines two previous legislative efforts — the Kids Online Safety Act and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act — into one package. It excludes a third, controversial provision that sought to ban children under 13 years old from creating social media accounts and prohibit students from accessing apps like Instagram on school and library internet networks. That effort, led by Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and Hawaii Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz, was met with widespread pushback from education groups.

The three dissenting votes Tuesday came from Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah.  

In a statement last week, Wyden argued that the bill’s amendments make it less likely to be “used as a tool for MAGA extremists to wage war on legal and essential information to teens,” but the changes remain insufficient. “A future MAGA administration could still use this bill to pressure companies to censor gay, trans and reproductive health information,” he said.

The Software and Information Industry Association, a trade group that represents ed tech companies, said in a statement Tuesday that it had similar concerns. The duty of care provision, the group said, could “do more harm than good” by requiring that tech companies “aggressively filter content and age gate content, putting user’s privacy at risk.” 

The legislation could also present hurdles for schools, according to an analysis by the Public Interest Privacy Center, which outlined how the provisions would allow students to opt out of adaptive tests or personalized learning and “enable parents and students to limit their screen time on a math app to five times per year — essentially opting out of using that ed tech platform.”

During the Zoom call on Tuesday, Evan Greer, the director of the nonprofit digital rights group Fight for the Future, argued that conservatives have made clear their intention to restrict students’ access to gender-affirming content. Greer pointed to Project 2025, a collaboration by the Heritage Foundation and more than 100 conservative groups to build a 922-page policy blueprint should Donald Trump retake the White House in November. 

The blueprint links gender-affirming content to pornography, claiming that “children suffer the toxic normalization of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries,” and that such material “has no claim to First Amendment protection.” 

“Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women,” the document claims, arguing that the materials are addictive like a drug and psychologically destructive. “Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.” 

On Tuesday, the same day that the digital safety legislation cleared the Senate, Project 2025 disbanded as Trump sought to distance himself from the group and Democrats used it to warn against the former president’s reelection bid. 

“There is a movement in this country that has been very explicit about their intention” to create laws that “go after online resources for some of the most vulnerable young people in this country,” Greer said. “We should take them at their word.”

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