Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill has joined the AGs of 30 other states in calling upon Congressional leadership to pass the bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act, which she calls crucial legislation that protects children from online harm, before the end of the year.
In a November 18 letter, the coalition emphasized the urgent need to address the growing crisis of youth mental health linked to social media use, with studies showing minors spend more than five hours daily online.
“We are acutely aware of the threats minors face on social media,” the coalition letter states. “Many social media platforms target minors, resulting in a national youth mental health catastrophe. These platforms make their products addictive to minor users, and then profit from selling minor user data to advertisers. These platforms fail to disclose the addicting nature of their products, nor the harms associated with increased social media use. Instead, minor users receive endless tailored and toxic content.
“Further, increasing evidence suggests these platforms are aware of the negative mental health effects social media burdens its underage users with, but choose to continue these practices. This is why many of our offices commenced investigations and lawsuits against Meta and TikTok for harming minors.”
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti is leading the effort. Monday’s letter was sent to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) and House Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky).
“As the chief legal officers of our states, we've seen firsthand how social media companies prioritize profits over our kids' safety,” Skrmetti said. “While our offices individually pursue investigations and lawsuits against platforms like Meta and TikTok, we are glad to support the Senate's bipartisan effort to empower our federal enforcement partners.
“KOSA provides additional tools to protect our children's mental health from the negative effects of social media.”
The attorneys general highlighted several key provisions of KOSA that would enhance online protections for minors:
- Mandatory default safety settings: Requiring platforms to automatically enable their strongest safety protections for minors rather than burying these features behind opt-in screens;
- Addiction prevention: Allowing young users and their parents to disable manipulative design features and algorithmic recommendations that keep children endlessly scrolling;
- Parental empowerment: Providing parents with new tools to identify harmful behaviors and improved capabilities to report dangerous content.
“As technology changes, parents and law enforcement are learning how social media companies fail to disclose the addicting nature of their products and the harm it does to our children. I join my fellow attorneys general in supporting the bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which will create a safer online environment for our kids,” Murrill said in a press release.
Louisiana joins the attorneys general of Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont and Wyoming in this letter to Congressional leadership.