R Street Institute Concerns about the Kids Online Safety Act (R Street)

KOSA also includes a requirement that parents receive notice and give their consent the first time their child accesses any covered site, a requirement that is problematic in several regards. In Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Assn., the Supreme Court made it clear that minors have First Amendment rights to access non-obscene content and speech, and thus conditioning access to general-use sites like social media platforms on parental consent is likely unconstitutional. On a more practical level, parental consent is difficult for websites to enforce with any degree of accuracy. Short of asking the parents to provide documented identification (an option which is likely to be very unpopular), it is impossible for online platforms to truly know whether it is a parent or guardian providing the consent. Moreover, such requirements fail to account for non-standard family situations where minors may have multiple, non-traditional or just neglectful guardians, potentially barring vulnerable youth most in need of help and resources from accessing either.