Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks Ahead of Tomorrow’s Vote On Bipartisan Legislation To Provide Necessary Guardrails For Kids’ Online Safety

Washington, D.C. – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor on the upcoming vote on the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children’s and Teens Online Protection Act (COPPA 2.0). Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

Before the Senate adjourned last week, we took a major step forward to ensure our kids’ online safety, by advancing KOSA and COPPA with strong bipartisan support, a vote of 86-1.

Thanks to both sides working together, the Senate is on track to pass KOSA and COPPA tomorrow. These bills are perhaps the most important updates in decades to federal laws that protect kids on the internet, and a good first step.

After the Senate passes KOSA and COPPA tomorrow with a strong bipartisan vote, the House should do the same when they return in September. The bipartisan momentum behind these bills is real and we should seize this opportunity to make a law.

While social media has many benefits, it also, as we know, has many risks, and KOSA and COPPA will instill guardrails that protect kids from these risks.

Too many kids experience relentless online bullying. Too many kids have their personal data collected and then used nefariously. And sadly, sadly, too many families have lost kids because of what happened to them on social media.

I’ve met with many of the families whose children took their own lives. We’ve felt the pain of loss together, we’ve cried together. What they have gone through is impossible to imagine – losing a child, and in this way – but these families, to their everlasting credit, instead of cursing the darkness, they lit a candle. They turned their grief into grace by working so hard to make sure this doesn’t happen to other kids, what happened to theirs.

I thank all of the families who advocated to get kids’ online safety over the finish line. Their efforts will pay off tomorrow. And I also want to thank colleagues who have relentlessly championed these bills: Senators Blumenthal and Blackburn, Markey and Cassidy, Durbin and Klobuchar, Chair Cantwell, and others.

Getting to this point wasn’t easy, that’s for sure. It has been a long and winding and difficult road. But after tomorrow, I am very proud that it will all have been worth it.

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