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Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I come here today to talk briefly on the Kids Online Safety Act before the milestone, historic vote that we will take at about noon today.

For years--in fact, for decades--Congress has discussed and debated the need for reform and safeguards on the internet. We have held dozens of hearings, brought Mark Zuckerberg and every other Big Tech CEO to our committees, and there has been broad agreement: Something needs to be done. We need rules, safeguards. Despite countless polls showing public bipartisan demand for legislation, nothing has happened, nothing.

Senator Blackburn and I began working on our subcommittee when we held legislative investigations on kids' online safety. Throughout that process, we began to meet with parents who have lost their children because of social media's harms from bullying, fentanyl, sex exploitation, and other horrific harms.

As a parent of four children and Senator Blackburn also as a parent, we felt deeply the grief, but we admired the grit and the grace of those parents who came to us and demanded action.

I am haunted by one of the moms who said to us early on, I think speaking on behalf of so many of them and us:

When will you stop them from killing people? When will you stop them from killing our children?

Voting today, the U.S. Senate is finally taking action on Big Tech.

At its core, the Kids Online Safety Act is a simple, straightforward measure. It gives young people and parents the tools and safeguards to take back control over their online lives. It gives them that measure of power. It empowers them. It enables them to make choices about what they want to see and hear on the internet rather than the algorithms that drive content--often repetitive, addictive content--about bullying and eating disorders that contributes to the destruction of their lives.

There are three key principles in this legislation: accountability, safeguards, and transparency.

First, social media platforms will be bound by a duty of care, legally required to exercise reasonable care to prevent their products from causing self-harm, suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse, and other harmful impacts.

The duty of care is flexible because we wanted to keep up with the changes in technology and to be able to be fairly applied to companies with widely different sizes, business models, and products.

We recognize the obligations on Instagram or YouTube should be different from those for a startup and that social media platforms are different from video games.

Second, social media platforms will have to provide young people safeguards and set them to the strongest settings by default.

Finally, social media companies will no longer be able to hide harm. This legislation will require yearly independent audits and access to data. Researchers, Congress, and parents all will be able to hold those companies truly accountable.

Importantly, this bill stops Big Tech from avoiding their legal obligations to protect children. We do that through the knowledge standard in the bill.

The bill ensures that if Meta or Google know or should know that a user is a teen or a child, they need to provide them the safeguards under this legislation. Where the platforms have information indicating that they are kids, they need to act and protect them--no more sticking their heads in the sand, no more excuses, no more platitudes that disguise inaction and irresponsibility.

In short, we want kids to have more of the good that comes from the internet without the bad. There are a lot of positives. Kids experience it, but there is some really scary, toxic stuff that kids also experience. And they have told us again and again and again they want to make choices. They don't want the algorithms to do it for them. That is why we have empowered them to make those choices. We are not blocking or censoring content for them. We are simply creating an environment that is safe by design.

At its core, this bill is a product design bill. All my career, I have tried to protect consumers against defective products that are designed to make more money and more profits at the risk or expense of injury to people. Whether it is cigarettes that are designed to kill the customer through nicotine addiction or car manufacturers that have been required to make their products safer by design through seatbelts and airbags or toys with small parts that endanger children who can choke on those parts unless there is sufficient warning to parents or caregivers, this society steps forward to make products safer, putting people, and particularly children, over products. That is what we are requiring social media to do.

We can no longer rely on the Big Tech companies to say to us: Trust us. They have betrayed that trust, and Congress has an obligation to act.

Over the past 3 years, we have worked exhaustively to improve this bill. We have sought feedback. We have made changes. We have revised and crafted new provisions. We have robustly debated the issues with anyone and everyone who had concerns.

I am immensely grateful to Senator Blackburn, who has been incomparably important as a partner, as a cowriter and drafter of this legislation, as an advocate because we share this common goal. Whatever our differences on other issues, this goal has been paramount for both of us over these past 3-plus years.

I want to also thank Senators Schumer and McConnell for scheduling this vote and Chair Cantwell and Ranking Member Cruz for their leadership and support for this bill in the Commerce Committee. The Kids Online Safety Act now has 72 cosponsors--nearly three-quarters of the membership of this Chamber. That is unheard of for an important, substantive piece of legislation that takes on the most powerful companies in the world.

Looking ahead, I am confident that we can build on this momentum--it is powerful momentum, but we need to build on it--and we can swiftly pass the Kids Online Safety Act in the House and enact it into law this fall as kids come back to school. Legislators will be returning from their home districts having heard from those parents and children, just as we have heard here, about the dangers and destruction coming from the internet. Senator Blackburn and I have spoken with the House leadership several times, and I believe we have strong support and a clear path forward.

Through this long process, our leaders--indeed, our loadstar--has been those parents and young people. They are in the Gallery today for the vote, and across the country, they are watching. Our Nation is watching because the parents of this Nation--not just the advocates and activists who came here to meet with Senators before now and, soon, Congresspeople, but all of the parents of this Nation who have a stake in the safety of our children--are demanding this change. They are demanding the Kids Online Safety Act because they know firsthand the heartbreak and loss that social media can cause. We can't bring back the lives of their loved ones, but we can save others.

These parents are heroes: spending countless hours living through the pain, telling and retelling their stories, bringing tears to our eyes, as the majority leader, Senator Schumer, has said so eloquently. He has felt that pain through them, through their eyes and through their hearts, and I particularly want to thank Senator Schumer for keeping his word and giving this bill a vote, keeping not only his word but keeping faith with those parents. Congress owes them, and I am honored to fight alongside them.

Today the Senate will show that it understands we are in the midst of a mental health crisis in this country, particularly for our young people, that is aggravated and exacerbated by Big Tech. And the reason is, very simply, a business model that, in effect, relies on repetitive addictive features driving toxic content at kids.

They want back control over their online lives. Parents are asking for tools and safeguards that give them a measure of control. Clearly, the need is so deeply and widely felt in this country, and the Senate today shows that it values the lives of young people over the political influence and the profits of Big Tech.

The armies of lawyers and lobbyists that it has been able to muster, the false pretenses of ``Sure, we want regulation but not that regulation,'' will finally be defeated. It is a historic day. It is time to vote.

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