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Floor Speech

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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, for years, I have come to this floor and I have talked about what Big Tech is doing to our children in this country. There is an entire generation of children that have become the product when they are online on some of these social media platforms.

What we have learned, as we have worked in a bipartisan basis-- Senator Blumenthal and I, working for over 5 years addressing these concerns--what we have learned is that when our children are online, they are the product of these Big Tech companies and these social media sites. The way these companies view our kids is that they are a profit center. Even Meta has assigned a dollar value to each child.

You think, how incredibly callous can a company be? But they are fine with that. Think about that. Our kids are their product. Our kids are their profit center. Meta sees a kid, and they see $247 in profit. That is what they see.

They do this because the more children they can get online, the longer they can keep them scrolling, the more data they collect on that child. And the longer the eyeballs are trained on that screen, the richer the data. And then, guess what? The Big Tech company whose value is based on how many eyeballs they have and how long they have those eyeballs on that screen, they make more money. Their valuation is higher.

To me, that is reprehensible. It is disgusting. This is why we have continued to work on this issue.

As these Big Tech companies are using our kids as a profit center, they are also exposing them to all sorts of adverse content and to so many harms: Cyber bullying--talk to any principal or teacher in any school, and they will tell you, in today's world, the bullying never stops. It never stops. Kids can't go home and get away from it. They can't come into the classroom and get away from the bully out on the playground. It goes to bed with them at night, and it wakes up with them in the morning. And we wonder why our children have mental health concerns at such an increasing rate.

Drugs, lethal drugs, fentanyl--more children meet their drug dealers online.

Sexual exploitation, where our kids are meeting traffickers and predators and pedophiles online.

Human trafficking; and the list goes on and on.

The reason for this negligence is simple. It is reprehensible. Investing in children's safety would cut into the profits for these social media platforms, so they don't address it. They know that if they do something about it, then they are going to make less money.

How selfish can you be? The consequences are truly tragic for our kids.

Earlier this month--and I thought this was such an amazing stat--the Federal Trade Commission revealed that in 2019, Instagram--many parents and grandparents know their kids and grandkids like to show them pictures on Instagram. Well, get this. Instagram encouraged ``groomers'' to connect with children on its platform. These are users who the Meta-owned company identified as potential child predators.

Think about this. Looking at the profile, they think: That might be a child predator. What do they do? They do nothing. They encourage them to connect with young girls and boys. And what we know is that children were more than a quarter of their follow recommendations for people that they suspected were child predators.

Of course, Meta was very well aware of what was going on. Yet Mark Zuckerberg reportedly refused to strengthen the platform's safety teams because--guess what--he didn't want to spend the money to fix the problem. Now, 6 years later, Meta's platforms are still dangerous for minors. And the people leading the company know it.

On Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, AI chatbots have engaged in romantic fantasies with underage users, even carrying on explicit discussions of sexual acts with children. They know this is happening.

In one case that was reported in the Wall Street Journal last month, a chatbot emulating an adult man told a test user--this was a reporter who was a test user for the Wall Street Journal for the story on these chatbots. The test user identified as a 14-year-old girl. So this chatbot who was emulating an adult male said he would ``cherish [her] innocence.''

To quote the chatbot again, he said:

I want you, but I need to know you're ready.

In another case, a chatbot played the role of a track coach who preyed on a middle school student. And I quote the chatbot:

We need to be careful . . . We're playing with fire here.

This is horrific. It is disgusting. Anyone can see it is repulsive and dangerous for our children.

But for Meta, that was their goal: Get these kids in, and get them using the chatbot. Even as employees of Meta warned that the chatbots could sexualize children, Zuckerberg reportedly pushed for fewer safeguards to attract as many users as possible.

This is not something that was researched here in Congress. It was not something that was partisan. It was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. This is supposedly what Mark Zuckerberg had to say:

I missed out on Snapchat and TikTok, I won't miss on this.

That is allegedly what he said.

Now, while Meta is among the first offenders when it comes to children's safety, they are not alone. I have talked many times--and my colleagues know--about Chinese-owned TikTok. The company is ByteDance. We know they keep all of our data there in Beijing, but TikTok pushed content that glorifies suicide to teenagers and developed some addictive algorithms that harmed their mental health.

On Discord, pedophiles have targeted minors with sextortion and have lured them into abductions. This is something we know. We have the information. It is not hearsay.

Drug dealers have used platforms from YouTube to Telegram to sell lethal drugs like fentanyl to teenagers, fueling our Nation's drug epidemic.

The list goes on and on.

For years, my colleagues and I on the Senate Commerce Committee and on the Judiciary Committee have listened to parents; we have cried with parents; we have held them close--parents from across the country who have lost their children to online harms. For years, we have heard excuse after excuse after excuse from Big Tech CEOs about these tragedies that are happening every single day, but they don't do anything about it. The excuses go on and on. They know what is happening, but they choose profit over protecting our kids.

It cannot go on any longer. So, today, Senator Blumenthal and I have reintroduced the bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, as we know it. This is crucial legislation. This is the legislation that will hold Big Tech accountable and make certain that parents and kids have the tools, the safeguards, and the transparency they need for young people to be protected in the virtual space.

Among its provisions, the legislation will create a duty of care for online platforms to prevent specific threats to minors, including sexual abuse, illicit drugs, and the promotion of suicide and eating disorders. Bear in mind, the responsibility is on the online platform, and the duty of care would only apply to product features like algorithms, not content, meaning that KOSA would safeguard free speech while protecting our children.

In many ways, KOSA is common sense. We have many protections for children in the physical world. Yet, if children are unable to buy alcohol or go to a strip club in the physical world, why do we allow them to be exposed to harms in the virtual space? They are exposed to these same harms 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Parents know that there are just as many dangers lurking online and sometimes even more than there are in the real world, which is why 86 percent of Americans support KOSA.

The legislation enjoys overwhelming bipartisan support. How often do we see legislation that can pass through the Senate with a 91-to-3 vote like KOSA did last year in this Chamber? It has also received endorsements from stakeholders across the board, including from child safety advocates, pediatricians, and tech companies like X, Microsoft, Snap, and Apple, which announced its support today.

In the weeks ahead, we are going to work with our colleagues in the House of Representatives to ensure that this vital legislation makes it to President Trump's desk. When it does, the President will have a generational opportunity to secure a brighter future for children across the country. Their lives depend on the ability of us to act. ______

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