Dear Moms:
KOSA Is in the House
We asked mothers an open ended question in the July Pulse Poll Issues That Matter Most to Mothers: “What one issue do you wish the power of the pack could solve?” One of the most frequent answers was keeping kids safe from abuse. Count On Mothers is keeping a close eye on developments with the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which may head to markup in the House Committee on Energy and Commerce this week.
Our results last fall ehen we polled mothers on their opinions about KOSA were overwhelmingly in favor of the bill. For the quantitative section, mothers weighed in on each component of the bill; and for the qualitative section, we conducted a one-hour panel discussion of mothers across political ideology and region. We shared results with the Senate Judiciary Committee, and submitted a Statement in the Record for the January 31st Senate Hearing: Big Tech and Child Online Safety. Among mothers who identified as conservative and very conservative, 71% believed that the bill would have a positive impact on the safety, health, and well-being of kids and families. 89% of mothers who identified as liberal or very liberal agreed. Even more so, 91% of mothers who identified as moderate believed the bill would have a positive effect.
Senator Blumenthal’s office says they are making an all-hands push to get the bill marked up this week in the House. “The more people are pushing, the better positioned we are,” Blumenthal’s office told us. After a brief conversation with the Chief Counsel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, we know that the Chair, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, is “very supportive” of the bill.
The bill has passed in the Senate, so if it passes the House and is signed by the President it would be the first law to hold social media companies accountable.
The House Committee on Energy and Commerce is gathering stories now to support the passage of this bill. We know these stories are personal and may cause discomfort to share. We have prepared a link for easy collection, also you can forward this to any moms you know.
In their words:
The Committee is looking to gather stories from American families with children that have been impacted by online harms from social media and online companies to support their work on advancing KOSA.
Particularly we are looking for:
(1) the name of the child
(2) the name of their parents
(3) the age of the child at the time of the incident
(4) the child's hometown
(5) an image of the child
(6) 4-5 sentences about the child and the incident
(7) permission to share the story publicly
We are hoping to collect all stories by 4 PM EST Sept. 17, 2024.
Other big things happening:
• After results from our April report, the FDA and DOJ have announced an interagency task force to tackle illegal sales of unauthorized vapes. Senator Blumenthal has also joined with Senator Dick Durbin to file amicus briefs on cases preserving marketing denial orders of flavored e-cigarettes.
• Our full report on the Bipartisan Childcare Plan will be published in the next couple of days… stay tuned! Key findings will be shared with Senators Britt and Kaine, and Chamber of Mothers to inform their VoteLikeaMother Campaign.
• Our September poll on the American Education Climate is live now — please take two minutes to be in for the count! We’ll send results to ProPublica and will have data ready for the update of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.
