The Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, prevents minors in the USA from accessing harmful material online. But is this bill itself dangerous as well? KOSA Is a censorship bill that allows the child’s parents and school to monitor their child’s behavior online to a certain extent. Still, there isn’t a defined line of what is considered acceptable or harmful to minors. The bill was first introduced in 2019, but It is hard to tell whether or not the bill will be passed because of its somewhat unethical propositions. According to an article on CooPWB, “Predicting whether the Kosa bill will pass remains uncertain due to its varying support and opposition. The future implications, should it be passed, are also unclear.” The article also states that KOSA is “waiting votes in the Senate, House of Representatives, and Presidential approval”. If it were to be approved in the Senate, the KOSA bill would be passed. In a KOSA one-pager, there is a line that states that the KOSA bill- “Gives parents new controls to help support their children and spot harmful behaviors and provides them (as well as schools) a dedicated channel to report any harms to kids.”

While to parents, it seems like a good thing to monitor their children to make sure they are staying away from dangerous content, their children and others might believe that this can be considered an invasion of privacy. This bill’s approval worries those hiding things from their parent, such as gender identity and sexuality. Telling your parents about this can be scary, and you need to find the right time to say it to them, but if a parent is homophobic, the KOSA bill potentially causes even more harm to children. The KOSA bill isn’t as simple as other age restrictions and kid versions on other streaming platforms and websites.

KOSA goes the extra mile to make sure children are “safe.” KOSA requires parents to turn on the “strongest privacy setting by default.” These quotes can be found in the KOSA one-pager from before. Not only will this affect the kids in the US and other kids in different parts of the world. Minors who post on social media platforms could be stopped from doing so; this prevents interactions with you and potentially a creator whose content you enjoy online. This isn’t a big deal to some, but to others, these people create a space where others can feel safe and confident in themselves while keeping them away from their worries and troubles in the real world. The KOSA bill promises parents a way to help their children without thinking of the many harms that might come their way because of it. Do you believe the KOSA is ethical?