Unpacking the scope of the KIDS Act

On the evening of 29 June 2026, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 7757, the Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act, by a decisive bipartisan margin of 267 to 117. After hammering out a compromise at the committee level with expectations of White House support — possibly in exchange for future support of preemptive AI legislation — House leadership had brought the bill directly to the floor for a vote under the “fast track” process.

The bill is a package of youth privacy and safety legislation, a consolidation brought about by negotiations spearheaded by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., and Ranking Member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., alongside crucial input from Representatives Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., and Kathy Castor, D-Fla. To secure the necessary bipartisan consensus within the House, leadership modified or excised the most polarizing elements of prior iterations. 

Important to the ultimate fate of the bill package, the version of KOSA in the final House bill fundamentally diverges from the Senate's version of the Kids Online Safety Act, S. 1748, lacking a "duty of care" provision. This essential ingredient for the Senate sponsors would impose a broad legal obligation on platforms to actively mitigate psychological harms, such as depression, eating disorders and suicidal ideation. The House negotiators, responding to concerns that a generalized duty of care would incentivize platforms to engage in censorship of constitutionally protected speech, replaced this mechanism with prohibitions on specific design features and operational safeguards. Some of these go beyond the Senate version, e.g., folding in the House’s Safe Messaging for Kids Act, which would place restrictions around ephemeral messaging.