On Wednesday, two senators — Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) — introduced a bill that attempts to monitor how children spend time online, specifically in regards to social media platforms. The Kids Online Safety Act would require companies behind products like Instagram and TikTok to provide tools for parents and children under the age of 16 to, well, keep them safer on the internet.
These tools include providing ways for parents to measure how much time their kids are spending online and to opt out of autoplay features that aim to extend users’ screen time. Additionally, tech companies would be required to offer parents and minors the ability to tweak existing recommendation algorithms — after all, YouTube’s recommendations can sometimes veer towards the extreme side of things.
