The Senate is considering a bill called the Kids Online Safety Act that is aimed at making the Internet safer for children.
U.S. Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D.-Conn.) introduced the bill in May 2023. In a press release, Blackburn said the proposed legislation “requires social media companies to make their platforms safer by default” and “provides parents with the tools they need to protect their children online.”
But a viral TikTok and a tweet claim that, if passed, the Kids Online Safety Act would require people to upload their driver’s licenses to post online.
A VERIFY viewer on TikTok asked the team if that’s true.
THE QUESTION
Would the Kids Online Safety Act require people to upload their driver’s licenses before posting online?
THE SOURCES
- Senate Bill 1409, or the Kids Online Safety Act
- Mark MacCarthy, Ph.D., nonresident senior fellow in governance studies with the Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation and adjunct professor at Georgetown University
- MATURE and Protecting Kids on Social Media Acts
THE ANSWER
No, the Kids Online Safety Act would not require people to upload their driver’s licenses before posting online.
WHAT WE FOUND
The Kids Online Safety Act outlines multiple proposals aimed at protecting children online. Those include tools for parents to identify harmful behaviors, as well as requirements for social media companies to add protections for minors and to have their platforms audited to ensure those safeguards are working.
But the bill doesn’t include a requirement for people to upload their driver’s licenses before posting online, as social media posts claim.
One section of the proposed legislation requires the National Institute of Standards and Technology, an agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce, to conduct an age verification study and submit a report to Congress. The bill doesn’t explicitly require any recommendations from the study to be implemented.
That study would “evaluate the most technologically feasible methods and options for developing systems to verify age at the device or operating system level,” according to the bill text.
The study will consider the following:
- The benefits of creating such an age verification system;
- What information might need to be collected to create this type of system;
- How such a system could verify age while reducing risk to user privacy and data security, and safeguarding minors’ personal data;
- The technical feasibility of such a system, including the need for potential hardware and software changes.
But none of the sections within the bill, including the one requiring the study on age verification systems, mention a requirement for someone to upload their driver’s license.
Mark MacCarthy, a technology policy expert at the Brookings Institution and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, also confirmed to VERIFY that KOSA “does not require driver’s license uploading.”
“The legislation only requires reasonable efforts to identify minors and does not require any specific method to be used,” he said.
Spokespersons for Senators Blumenthal and Blackburn did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.
The Kids Online Safety Act has not been passed in the Senate or the House. It was most recently referred to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
Though the bill doesn’t require anyone to upload a driver’s license, it doesn’t stop private social media companies from implementing this requirement on their own in the future.
Misinformation may stem from other proposed legislation
It's not clear where the claims about KOSA and driver's license requirements are coming from, but people could be conflating the bill with other proposed legislation.
In February 2023, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) introduced the Making Age-Verification Technology Uniform, Robust, and Effective (MATURE) Act in the Senate.
That bill, which does not have any cosponsors, would require social media platforms to verify that people who create accounts are at least 16 years old. The verification process would require people to submit a copy of their government-issued identification, which could include a driver’s license.
Another bill called the Protecting Kids on Social Media Act, introduced by a bipartisan group of senators in April 2023, would “create a pilot project for a government-provided age verification system that platforms can choose to use.”
The program would “allow individuals to verify their age, or their parent or guardian relationship with a minor user, by uploading copies of government-issued and other forms of identification…or by validating the authenticity of identity information provided by the individual” using various government agencies’ records, according to the bill text.
Those government-issued IDs could include a driver’s license. But the bill explicitly states that the pilot program would be “voluntary,” meaning online platforms wouldn’t be required to use it.
Both bills have not been passed. They were also referred to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.
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