Nearly half of America’s teenagers say social media harms young people their age, according to data from the Pew Research Center. Members of Congress have been working to add guardrails that would protect children from dangers online, but it’s been a long struggle.
In some instances, legislators have highlighted individual stories to show the severity and prevelance of threats facing kids on social media. One of those personal narratives is that of Sammy Chapman.
“Sammy was a bright and talented teenager whose life was tragically cut short after he became the victim of a fentanyl poison drug he bought through social media,” shared Republican Rep. Buddy Carter of Georgia in a congressional hearing last month.
Chapman was only 16 when he died. His death inspired the drafting of Sammy’s law, which would require large social media platforms like Facebook to provide access to software that would notify parents when their kids may be engaging in risky behavior online.
The House version passed out of committee, and its Senate counterpart was introduced last month.
But this bipartisan bill only one addresses one piece of the puzzle.
“We’ve seen again and again that kids manage to evade any tools that parents use,” explained Seton Hall law professor Gaia Bernstein.
Another proposal, the Kids Online Safety Act, known colloquially as KOSA, has been kicking around for years. It would mandate that social media sites activate the top safety and privacy settings for users under 17, and allow young users to opt out of features that can cause compulsive use. Features that can heighten harassment and bullying also would be limited.
Stony Brook University clinical professor Nicholas Kardaras was a consultant for members of Congress working on the bill, and noted previous iterations had some hiccups.
“My experience has been that Republicans were concerned about what was ever perceived as censorship, and Democrats were perceived–were concerned with disinformation, and so there would be a little bit of an ideological battle, but everyone agreed, protect the kids,” Kardaras said.
Lawmakers argue the current version works out those kinks, but the bipartisan effort still faces challenges.
“I believe that what’s going on is intensive lobbying by the tech industry to prevent the Kids Online Safety Act known as KOSA from passing,” Bernstein said.
Big Tech is a multi-trillion dollar industry that spent more than $100 million on federal lobbying last year, according to OpenSecrets.
In total, lobbying expenditures in 2025, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, shelled out more than 26-million-dollars, Amazon spent nearly 19-million, and Alphabet, the parent company of Google, spent 16-point-5-million.
Meta did not respond when asked if the company opposed KOSA, but in the past has said “we want to collaborate with parents to help teens use social media in a meaningful way, with the right protections, oversight, and guardrails.”
Recently, the industry was dealt a major blow. Last month, Meta and YouTube were found to be liable for a young woman’s addiction and mental health struggles in a landmark case.
“It’s been a nuclear bomb on the mental health of young people,” Kardaras said.
He said this decision gives him hope that perhaps a joint approach through litigation and legislation will move the process along to put social media guardrails in place for America’s young adults.
It just has to get through Congress first.
