Concerned about student safety online?
Take action today to protect children and youth online! Consider sharing this quick and easy National PTA Action Alert out to your communities!
On Wednesday August 5, 2026, the Kids Online Safety Act
(S. 1748) (KOSA), advanced through the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. The measure, which has strong bipartisan support, is aimed at establishing protection for children’s online safety by creating parental controls and studying the impact of social media on the well-being of kids. (1)
In addition to KOSA, the Youth AI Privacy Act (S. 4199); the Children’s Health, Advancement, Trust, Boundaries, and Oversight in Technology Act (S.4407); and the Children’s Artificial Intelligence Toy Safety Act (S. 5171) were also voted out of committee. (2)
We’ve been here before
There have been several attempts to pass legislation to protect children on the internet. In December 2024, National PTA called on Congress to pass the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (H.R. 7890) (COPPA 2.0) and the Kids Online Safety Act (H.R. 7891). National PTA contended COPPA 2.0 to be “a long-overdue and desperately needed update of federal law from 1998 to better protect the personal information of children online.” The Senate version of these bills passed with overwhelming bi-partisan support. Neither bill advanced to the floor of the House of Representatives. (3)
Can we make progress now?
On March 7, 2026, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed COPPA 2.0. This July, National PTA advocated for KOSA by signing on to a letter with many other organizations concerned with student mental health. (4) KOSA and the other bills voted out of committee on August 5th still need to pass on the floor of the Senate to advance to the House of Representative. The U.S. Senate is in summer recess until September 14, 2026. We do not want to lose momentum. National PTA is asking the membership to Take Action. Please visit National Parent Teacher Association | Take Action Today to Protect Children and Youth Online! and ask your senators to pass the Kids Online Safety Act.
Have questions? Want to get more involved? Reach out to FedLeg@wastatepta.org.
- Kids Online Safety Act social media safety bill advances in Senate CNBC, August 5, 2026
- Kids Online Safety Act clears key Senate panel with bipartisan support | K-12 Dive K-12 Dive, August 5, 2026
- national-pta-kosa-coppa-letter_dec-2024_final.pdf National PTA, December 10, 2024
- july-14-2026—national-pta-joins-letter-urging-senate-commerce-committee-to-markup-the-kids-online-safety-act-(kosa)-(s-1748).pdf National PTA, December 14, 2026