MinnPost31%
Congress can take a critical step to protect kids on the internet 59%
By Erich Mische72%
7/30/2026, 11:55:06 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 28 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Anecdotal, and Biased Writer Voice, with Appeal to Emotion as the most egregious example at 19.3% saturation with 142 hits. Analysis detected 1,359 faulty-reasoning hits from 734 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 54.9% and a BS Rank of 59% (9,219 of 22,362 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 58.80% of the article peer group.
The last time Congress passed a major law protecting children on the internet was 1998.
There were no smartphones.
Social media as we know it did not exist.
No child had ever confided in an AI chatbot.
The families I work with every day lost their children to harms engineered into platforms nobody had yet built.
That was more than a quarter century ago.
In late June, that finally started to change.
On June 29, the U.S.
House passed the Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act by a bipartisan vote of 267-117.
SAVE and the partners we work with have learned that the Senate Commerce Committee intends to mark up the Kids Online Safety Act, known as KOSA, next week just before the Senate is slated to begin its August recess.
KOSA is a stronger bill that 77 senators, including Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar, already support.
For the first time in a generation, both chambers of Congress are moving on the same problem at the same time.
That is not a coincidence.
It is a window.
And windows like this one close.
SAVE welcomed the House vote, and we did so for a simple reason.
A bill that passes one chamber is a statement.
A bill that passes both chambers is a negotiation.
And negotiation is the only thing that has ever produced a law.
We have run the other experiment.
In 2024, the Senate passed KOSA 91-3, one of the most lopsided bipartisan votes in years, and it died in the House while Washington started over.
This time, both chambers are moving.
The job now is to finish with the strongest bill that can reach the president’s desk, and the Senate’s KOSA is the stronger foundation to build it on.
Minnesota knows exactly what we are up against.
Last year, our state passed one of the first laws in the nation requiring mental health warning labels on social media platforms.
And what did Big Tech do?
It went to court.
Today, implementation of that law is tied up in a lawsuit brought by the industry, the same playbook the platforms run in state after state: fight every safeguard, delay every protection, and let the meter keep running on our kids.
And when Big Tech is not suing, it is selling a substitute.
The industry has found allies willing to promote voluntary standards as the answer to protecting children.
There is an old saying for that arrangement: foxes guarding the henhouse.
So-called safety ratings are enthusiastically embraced by Big Tech for a simple reason.
They are voluntary, they carry zero force of law, and they protect absolutely nobody.
When a single state acts, Big Tech can sue it into a standstill.
When Congress hesitates, Big Tech offers to regulate itself.
Both roads lead to the same place: nothing changes, and the meter keeps running.
That is the argument for strong federal legislation that no platform can litigate its way around or water down into a press release.
Here is what must happen.
The Senate Commerce Committee should mark up KOSA and send it to the floor.
The full Senate should pass it, as it overwhelmingly did before.
Then the House and Senate should do what Congress exists to do: hammer out the strongest bill that can pass both chambers and be signed into law, one that holds platforms accountable for the harms built into their products and protects every state’s ability to defend its own kids.
I have stood at the rallies.
I have hugged the mothers holding photographs of their children.
I have listened to fathers who never expected to speak in public about anything, telling strangers about the worst day of their lives in the hope of sparing another family.
These families are looking for Congress to pass the strongest version of an online safety bill, one that will protect children from suicide, illegal drugs, sex trafficking, sextortion and other online harms, and that will hold Big Tech accountable for what its products inflict on kids.
More than a quarter century is long enough.
The House has acted.
The Senate’s turn is now.
Mark it up.
Vote it out.
Get it to the president’s desk.
Our kids have waited their entire lives.
Erich Mische is CEO of SAVE, Suicide Awareness Voices of Education, a national suicide prevention nonprofit headquartered in Bloomington.
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