- United States
- Md.
- Letter
Codify teen-safety defaults for every platform
Meta has agreed to pay up to $18 billion to a bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general over harms to teenagers, and to give teen accounts two-hour daily default limits, an overnight curfew, and stronger age assurance. Court approval is pending.
A settlement is a rule for one company. It binds Meta for about ten years, then expires. The next platform teenagers migrate to is born unbound. Only Congress can make these protections a rule for the whole category — and the Senate has already shown the votes exist: the Kids Online Safety Act passed 91-3 in 2024 before stalling in the House.
Please codify three narrow protections:
1. Statutory safety defaults for minors — daily time limits and overnight curfews, on by default, adjustable by parents, on every major platform.
2. Published, independent impact assessments on youth mental health before any platform reaching more than 10% of Americans deploys a new recommendation system.
3. An outright ban on behavioral profiling of minors.
One limit matters as much as the asks: regulate defaults, design, and data practices — never what platforms or users say. Conduct, not viewpoint. Drawing that line clearly is how this passes where earlier bills stalled.
These provisions are drawn from Act X of the Rational Foundation Plan: rules-not-rulers.org/wtp/digital-governance-act. A uniform federal standard serves families and platforms better than a patchwork of consent decrees.