Meta Platforms has pressed U.S. lawmakers for federal legal protections that would block state-law lawsuits alleging that social media products, including Instagram, cause harm to children, according to a source familiar with the matter and proposed legislative language reviewed by Reuters.
The wording that Meta circulated would render online companies "immune from suit or liability under state law" for claims related to children’s online safety. That language appears alongside provisions that would preempt state-level laws addressing children’s online safety and privacy.
If lawmakers were to accept and enact the language as part of the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA - which is under consideration in the U.S. Senate - the change could undercut thousands of existing lawsuits by young users and their families against Meta and other platforms. In a related legal development earlier this year, Meta and Google’s YouTube faced a combined $6 million in damages after losing the first trial on such claims.
Meta declined to comment. The company has previously advocated for federal standards, including requiring app stores to verify user age and replacing state laws on children’s online safety, and the newly reviewed language is consistent with that stance.
According to the source, Meta proposed the immunity language in exchange for dropping its opposition to KOSA. The bill, led by Senators Marsha Blackburn and Richard Blumenthal, would obligate social media companies to take reasonable steps to prevent specified harms to minors, citing compulsive use as one example.
KOSA would require companies to exercise care when deploying particular features that lawmakers and advocates say can contribute to harm among younger users. Those features named in the bill text include infinite scrolling, activity notifications and appearance-altering photo filters.
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While legislators have not indicated they will adopt Meta’s proposed language, the lobbying effort illustrates the scale of protections the company is seeking as Congress considers the most significant federal regulation of online platforms in decades.
As the KOSA debate continues, the intersection of federal preemption, platform liability and state-level protections for children’s online safety remains unresolved.