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On August 5, 2026, the Senate Commerce Committee advanced an amended version of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and three related youth-safety bills. That was a committee milestone—not passage by the full Senate and not enactment. The House has passed a separate package, the KIDS Act, so the two chambers have not approved one identical bill.
What cleared the Senate committee—and what did not
The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee advanced amended S. 1748, KOSA, along with the Youth AI Privacy Act, the CHATBOT Act, and the Children’s Artificial Intelligence Toy Safety Act on August 5, 2026. The committee’s release reported voice votes for those measures, without vote counts. Chairman Ted Cruz’s prepared remarks described the proposals as ways to give parents more control and protect children from serious online harms.
The committee also recorded a 15–13 vote for the SCREEN Act, but its release said a revote was required to comply with Senate in-person attendance rules. That roll call was for the SCREEN Act, not KOSA. Cruz’s remarks cited a 91–3 Senate vote on an earlier version of KOSA in the previous Congress; that was not a vote on the 2026 amended bill.
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- KOSA: The committee chair described guardrails for platforms used by minors, including social media, online video games, messaging apps, and video streamers.
- CHATBOT Act: Cruz said it would require family accounts, parental consent before teen accounts, protective defaults, and steps addressing obscene output and suicide-related interactions.
- Youth AI Privacy Act: Cruz described restrictions on advertising to minors on chatbots and limits on retaining and using chatbot memory.
- Children’s Artificial Intelligence Toy Safety Act: The measure directs a study and a joint Federal Trade Commission/Consumer Product Safety Commission action plan. It is not a consumer safety standard already in force.
These descriptions concern proposed measures. None of the proposals described here is established as enacted law by the committee action.
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How the House KIDS Act differs from Senate KOSA
The House-passed KIDS Act, H.R. 7757, and amended Senate KOSA are separate texts. The Congressional Research Service’s August 24, 2026 comparison says the House bill’s “Kids Online Safety” section does not contain a duty-of-care section, while amended Senate KOSA does. That distinction matters: the House and Senate had not simply advanced matching versions of one bill.
| Issue | House-passed KIDS Act (H.R. 7757) | Amended Senate KOSA (S. 1748) |
|---|---|---|
| Procedural status described here | Passed the House June 29, 2026; received and referred to the Senate Commerce Committee July 13, 2026. | Advanced by the Senate Commerce Committee August 5, 2026; full Senate passage is not established here. |
| Duty-of-care section | The CRS comparison says the bill’s “Kids Online Safety” section does not include one. | The CRS comparison says the amended text includes a duty-of-care section. |
| Platform safeguards | The CRS summarizes proposed reasonable policies addressing listed harms, safeguards for communications, recommendation systems, compulsive-use features and geolocation, plus parental tools, messaging controls, reporting channels, notices and audits. | The committee chair described guardrails for platforms used by minors, including social media, games, messaging apps and video streamers. The CRS comparison identifies a duty-of-care section; it does not make the House and Senate texts interchangeable. |
| Age and privacy provisions in the package | The House text includes SCREEN Act age-verification language and COPPA 2.0 provisions. It would define a child for COPPA purposes as someone under 14 and extend various privacy provisions to teens. | The Senate committee’s August 5 action separately advanced the SCREEN Act, but the committee release said its 15–13 vote required a revote to satisfy attendance rules. The material cited here does not establish that the House package’s age-verification and COPPA provisions are part of amended KOSA. |
The proposed House platform obligations apply according to the bill’s covered-platform and minor definitions; they should not be read as rules already binding on every service used by a young person. The House KIDS Act’s passage does not itself make its provisions law.
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Why civil-liberties groups object
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 useful material, including addiction-recovery, mental-health and gender-affirming-care information. The ACLU presents this as a risk of the bill, not as a court finding or an established outcome. Its senior policy counsel Jenna Leventoff said, “Censorship and invasive age verification measures will not keep children safe,”
The organization also warns that age verification could require collection of significant personal information, make access harder for adults unable to verify, and increase exposure to data breaches. Those are the ACLU’s predictions about potential effects, not proof that a particular system has caused those harms.
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Senators Maria Cantwell and Richard Blumenthal separately criticized the House package, arguing that it removes KOSA’s duty-of-care standard, covers fewer platforms and harms, and could preempt state-law cases. Those points are the senators’ critique of the House bill. The different treatment of duty of care in the CRS comparison is a textual distinction; claims about breadth and state-law consequences remain attributed arguments.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the committee action means now
As of the latest verified action described here, dated August 5, 2026, Senate Commerce Committee advancement was the hurdle these Senate measures had cleared. The House had passed H.R. 7757, but referral to the Senate Commerce Committee was not Senate passage. Committee votes and House passage are separate steps, and neither should be described as the measures becoming law. Because legislation can move after those actions, readers should check the relevant chamber’s official record for any later procedural developments.
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