Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks Announcing The Senate Will Vote On Kids’ Online Safety Legislation

Washington, D.C. –  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today announced on the Senate floor the Senate will vote this week on advancing the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children’s and Teens Online Protection Act (COPPA), emphasizing the need for improved internet safety for children and teens.  Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

When you’re a parent, there is no greater pain imaginable than the pain of losing a child, or in my case I might say a grandchild as well. We all think of it almost every day when we have kids, when we have grandkids. What if they're gone somehow? How would we even go forward?

My kids are now adults and are having kids of their own, but I remember when they were little, nothing mattered more to me than keeping them safe. As parents, that’s what we want to do: keep our kids safe as much as we can, to shield them from harms they’re too young to handle, and to ensure we, as a country, guard against those who’d prey, or exploit, or otherwise harm our loved ones. I feel this way as strongly as ever as a grandparent when I think of my three beautiful grandchildren.

Unlike decades past, ensuring our kids’ safety today means ensuring their online safety, to protect kids from online bullying and exploitation and other risks to their mental health. Social media has helped hundreds of millions of people to connect in new ways over the last two decades, but there are also new and sometimes serious health risks that come along with those benefits. We cannot set these risks aside. On this issue, we desperately need to catch up.

So this week, I’m proud to say, the Senate will vote on kids’ online safety. For the information of Senators, I am announcing that this week the Senate will take up two bipartisan bills to protect our kids while they use the internet: the Kids Online Safety Act – or KOSA – and the Children’s and Teens Online Protection Act – or COPPA.

Today, I will move to lay a message before the Senate that I intend to use as a vehicle for the substance of those two bills. Members should prepare for a cloture vote on the message as soon as Thursday.

Passing kids’ online safety, as we all know, has been months in the making. This has been a long and bumpy road, but one thing I always knew for sure: it would be worth it. I’ve worked closely with members on both sides of the aisle to get these bills ready for the floor Senators Blumenthal and Blackburn, Markey and Cassidy, and so many others. I made sure that members on both sides had plenty of time to offer their input, work through disagreements, and arrive at a consensus. And now, after months of hard work, the moment to act has arrived, and the Senate should pass these bills swiftly.

Nothing has galvanized me and us here in the Senate more to act on kids’ online safety than meeting with the parents who’ve lost loved ones.

Over the past months, I’ve met with many parents from New York and from around the country whose kids took their own lives because of what happened to them on social media. Some of these kids were bullied. Others were targeted by predators or had their personal private information stolen. Practically all of them suffered deep mental health anguish in some way, and felt that they had nowhere to turn. And in far too many cases, their suffering ended in tragedy as they took their own lives.

I can’t comprehend the pain these parents have felt. No one would fault them if they hid away, if they mourned their children away from the spotlight, and processed their grief in private.

But the parents I’ve met are amazing and have done the opposite. Instead of retreating into darkness, they lit a candle. They worked doggedly to ensure other parents don’t have to endure the pain they did. I just was talking to one of the New York parents who was here, and that’s what she said. It so touched me – I want to make sure what happened to my child doesn't happen to others. 

These parents made their children’s memory into a blessing – a blessing that now bears fruit in the form of legislation that will prevent other kids from meeting the same terrible fate.

So for me, this effort is personal. To every senator who’s been a parent, its personal. When I talked to the parents who lost their children, and see pictures of their kids, I think of my kids when they were little. I think of my grandchildren today. The loss shatters your heart, and I think to myself that if we could get these bills done, it would do so much good for millions of families across the country.

So, we are going to get this done. We are going to get this done.

I thank the senators who have labored tirelessly on these bills, especially Blumenthal and Blackburn for their work on KOSA, Markey and Cassidy for COPPA, and Chair Cantwell for her excellent leadership on the Commerce Committee. I look forward to voting on advancing KOSA/COPPA here on the floor later this week.

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