Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, let me begin by expressing my profound thanks to Senator Blackburn for her leadership as a champion of the Kids Online Safety Act.

We have worked together over these years--yes, it has been years-- through the hearings, the drafting, the redrafting, the revisions on the redraft. Tirelessly, she has been a partner--and a true bipartisan partner--as have been Senator Schumer and Senator Thune, Senator McConnell and Senator Cruz.

I want to give my thanks to colleagues on both sides of the aisle for bringing us to this truly momentous and historic point in advocating for the Kids Online Safety Act. I am grateful to them and to Chair McMorris Rodgers on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Representatives Bilirakis and Casar, and to all who have joined us from the tech community, including supportive companies like Microsoft and Pinterest. Their leaders have endorsed this legislation.

I express my appreciation as well to Elon Musk and Linda Yaccarino.

Over the weekend, we negotiated a redraft that clarifies what we have said all along: This bill is about product design. It is about protecting kids from toxic content driven at them by products designed specifically to addict them, to take them down dark rabbit holes, to drive toxic content about bullying and eating disorders, self-harm, even suicide--a scourge that every parent in the United States recognizes must be stopped and stopped now--not next session or the session afterward--because children are dying.

They are literally in peril every day, as we know, because we are parents, we are grandparents, we are public officials who visited schools where young people, elementary school students, tell us about how their companions, their friends, their family members are harmed day in and day out and resort to suicide because no one is protecting them.

We are saying the Kids Online Safety Act will give you protection. It will give you tools and safeguards so you can take back your online lives and so that the bullies can't follow you, literally, into your bedroom at night. They are not confined to the schoolyard anymore but free to follow kids wherever they go because they are in jeopardy everywhere.

What we clarified is that there is no censorship in this bill. There is no content moderation. There is no blocking of specific content. It is about choice--giving young people choice and their parents safeguards, tools to protect their children, and imposing a duty of care, which other producers of any kind of product know they have. They have a duty of care to stop harm when they know or should know it is going to cause physical or emotional harm to people they should protect.

We are now one step away. We are so close to the Kids Online Safety Act becoming law. This measure passed in this body 91 to 3. How many measures pass the U.S. Senate these days by 91 to 3? Major steps forward in legislation passing with that kind of bipartisan support is virtually unheard of.

And today, in the House of Representatives--let me just be very blunt--it will pass by the same overwhelming bipartisan majority if it is given a vote. Let them vote. Let them do their job. I call on the House leadership to simply enable the democratic process to move forward.

We based this legislation on the kind of process that is the ideal here. We started with a recognition that the United States of America faces a mental health crisis. We can all give speeches. We can all recite the rhetoric about the mental health crisis in America that afflicts teens and preteens--a dramatic increase in anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and suicide. We can all agree--we do all agree--that social media is exacerbating and, indeed, fueling that mental health crisis in America.

Senator Blackburn and I have worked over years through hearings to demonstrate that kids' online safety is an idea whose time has come now. We heard from young people and parents across the country who have shared their experiences. They have come forward. They are our strongest supporters and advocates.

We received documents from whistleblowers demonstrating that Facebook--now known as Meta--consciously knew its products were harming people, and they continued because it made money. They knew that they were attracting more eyeballs for longer periods of time and, therefore, more advertisers collecting more data. It is all about the money.

They decided to put profits ahead of young people. And that is not from us; it is from their own documents that we can draw those conclusions. We brought in the Big Tech executives, and we grilled them on their appalling business practices. They said to us: Yeah, we know regulation is necessary. And they repeated it as a mantra when we had hearings: Regulation is important, just not that regulation.

Let me just say, bluntly, I challenge Meta, Facebook, and Google to support this legislation as Microsoft and Pinterest and now Elon Musk have done. Don't tell us it is a censorship measure. Don't tell us you are defending the First Amendment or free expression. Listen to Elon Musk, the champion of First Amendment free expression among tech executives, who now supports this bill because the arguments that you have given to us about censorship and free expression, the money that you have spent to fight this legislation, the armies of lawyers and lobbyists that still you use against us, simply cannot overcome the voices and faces of young people who have been harmed.

I want you to meet some of them. You know, there is a saying that every good story has a villain, a victim, and a hero. Our heroes are the young people and parents who have come forward to watch this moment. The world is watching us in the U.S. Congress at this moment. And the victims are young people and parents--parents who suffered losses of their children. Some of them are with us here today in spirit to demonstrate the cost of congressional delay and inaction, the cost that every parent should fear and feel today.

That is what happened to Mason Edens, who is here in this picture. Mason loved football and loved making other people smile. He wanted to serve his country when he grew up. He talked about becoming a police officer.

In 2022, Mason experienced his first heartbreak. Quickly after, Microsoft's algorithms inundated him with messages promoting self-harm. He even sought help on TikTok. But instead of providing that help, TikTok sent him more suicidal messages. He was trapped in a rabbit hole.

Depressed, having lost control, in November of 2022, Mason--this young man--took his own life at the age of 16.

I have four children. They are a lot older than 16 now, but every one of us knows a 16-year-old. We know how vulnerable young people are at that age.

TikTok is delighted to addict kids at all costs. What happened to Mason is a consequence of their business model. It is not some random occurrence. It is the direct result of a business model that is unconscionable.

And his death was preventable. He is just one of a dozens of deaths and horrific harms that we know happened while Congress waited--we waited and we waited--to pass the Kids Online Safety Act.

Another one of those victims is T'Saya Yapuncich. T'Saya was a Native American girl, young woman. Her name means eagle woman, one with Earth, and little huntress.

Her parents did what they could to set rules around her use of social media, but they didn't know that TikTok and Snapchat began to connect T'Saya with sexual predators. They exploited her trust. By age 11, T'Saya was experiencing self-harm and suicidal ideation--again, fueled by social media. No matter what help her parents tried to get her, T'Saya sank deeper into depression.

This Saturday, T'Saya would have reached 16 years old. Instead, she took her life last March--again, one of a dozen, like Jesse Harrington.

Jesse is here. He wanted to be a firefighter when he grew up. He wanted to save lives. He didn't get his first phone until last Christmas, at age 15. That is a pretty late age to be getting a phone these days.

He became addicted, unable to sleep, unable to look away from endless scrolling, unable to look away from the nudges of Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok. And he began having trouble in school, getting into conflicts with others.

Now, that part of the story, I think, occurs thousands and millions of times in America today--the distraction, unable to look away, the addictive impact.

On October 29 of this year, Jesse took his life. That part of the story, fortunately, is not common to as many children. But for Jesse, it was the end. Police found his device open and streaming when they arrived.

Mason, T'Saya, and Jesse were all horrific experiences. They didn't need to happen. They were preventable. We have examples and examples. I could spend the rest of the day into tomorrow with more specific examples: suicide, self-harm, bullying, eating disorders, fentanyl poisoning, sexual exploitation. All of it happens right now, right here in America, in realtime, to our young people.

That is not the message we want to send to America as a Congress. Senator Blackburn and I have addressed every single issue that Big Tech has thrown in our way. There are no excuses for delay. Anybody saying, ``Let's wait until next session so we can get it really right,'' that is saying they are OK with more kids dying. They are, in effect, with all due respect, playing political games with those lives that are at risk today in realtime in America--more families shattered, like Mason, T'Saya, Jesse. When I say shattered, I mean shattered.

I want to finish by quoting another mom, someone who has been a fierce advocate for this legislation. I have come to know her from this fight. I greatly respect her and admire her courage and strength: Deb Schmill.

Deb told me, and I am quoting:

Letting it go to the next legislature means children are going to die. It means another year of children dying. And who wants to be accountable for that?

We can't wait another year. We need this now.

Now, we can't bring back her daughter Becca, a beautiful young woman, or Mason or T'Saya or Jesse, but we can prevent other families from suffering the worse loss imaginable. We have it within reach to do it. Passing the Kids Online Safety Act is not some convenient step we can take to make people feel good. It is real action.

We don't often, here in this body, have an opportunity to save lives, to save futures, to save young people. We have that opportunity now.

I challenge the House of Representatives to do the right thing. Pass the Kids Online Safety Act.

Unanimous Consent Agreement--Executive Calendar

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, on behalf of the majority leader, at 5:15 today, I ask the Chair to execute the order of November 20 with respect to the Wise nomination.

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