The KIDS Act sets new federal online-safety rules covering children and teens (defined as anyone under 17) and the websites, apps, games, and AI tools they use. Pornography and other sites where more than a third of the content is sexual material harmful to minors would have to use age-checking technology within one year to keep minors out, applied to every visitor, though the bill bars requiring government IDs and limits how long that verification data is kept. Social media platforms would have to give minors the most protective default settings, give parents tools to manage accounts and screen time, answer harm reports within 10 days, turn off disappearing-message features for all minors and direct messaging for those under 13, and submit to independent annual audits with public reports. Online video games would owe parents similar communication and spending controls, and AI chatbot makers would have to tell minor users they are talking to a machine, point to crisis hotlines, and prompt a break after three hours of continuous use. The Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general would enforce the rules as unfair-or-deceptive-practice violations, with constitutional challenges funneled to the D.C. Circuit on a 90-day clock. The Act also orders federal studies on social media use, fentanyl access, and chatbots' mental-health effects, and it expressly leaves Section 230, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, and encryption protections unchanged.
Civil Liberties
- Anonymous access to adult-content sites — Age verification required for every visitor
- Encryption protections — Act barred from mandating decryption or backdoors for users
- Age-data retention limits — Verification data may not be kept beyond what is necessary
Transparency & Accountability
- Independent platform audits — Required annually for covered social media platforms
- Public audit reporting — Platforms must publish key audit findings each year
- Harm-report response duty — Platforms must reply to minor-harm reports within 10 days
- Federal research reporting — Studies ordered on social media, fentanyl access, and chatbot harms
Congressional Summary
Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act or the KIDS ActThis bill requires specified online platforms to establish safeguards for minors. The safeguards include (1) limiting access to specified sexual material, (2) providing parental controls on social media and online video game platforms, and (3) requiring artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots to disclose certain information to users who are minors.First, publicly available online platforms on which more than one-third of the content is considered sexual material harmful to minors under the bill must adopt technology to identify minors and prevent them from accessing such material.Next, social media platforms must (1) implement default settings for minors that limit compulsive usage features and the ability of other users to communicate with minors, and (2) provide tools for parents to manage the privacy and account settings of a minor. Social media platforms may not allow ephemeral messaging features for minors.The bill also requires online video game platforms to provide tools that allow parents to (1) limit communication between a minor and other users of the platform, and (2) restrict purchases by a minor on the platform. Further, providers of AI chatbots must disclose to users who are minors (1) that the chatbot is an AI system and not a human, and (2) suicide and crisis intervention hotline information.Finally, the bill requires specified studies and reports about the effects of social media platforms on minors and provides for enforcement of the bill's requirements by the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general.
Details
- Congress
- 119th
- Chamber
- House
- Status
- summarized
- Action
- Introduced in House
- Action Date
- 2026-03-03
- Date Added
- 2026-06-26
- Source
- Congress.gov →
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