Deb Schmill has become a fixture on Capitol Hill. Last week alone he visited the offices of 13 lawmakers, one of more than a dozen trips he made from his home near Boston in the past two years.
At each meeting, Schmill talks about his daughter Becca, who died in 2020 at age 18. Schmill said Becca had died after taking fentanyl-laced medications purchased on Facebook. Before that, she said, her daughter was raped by a boy she had met online and then cyberbullied on Snapchat.
“I have to do everything I can to help pass laws that protect other children and prevent what happened to Becca from happening to them,” said Schmill, 60. “It’s my coping mechanism.”
Schmill is among dozens of parents pushing for the Children’s Online Safety Act, or KOSA, a bill that would require social media, games and messaging apps to limit features that could increase depression. or harassment or leading to sexual exploitation. The bill, which has the biggest push of any sweeping tech industry legislation in years, would also require tech services to turn on the highest privacy and security settings by default for users under 17 and allow young people opt for some features that can lead to compulsive use.
Partly modeled after Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which pushed for the 1984 federal law requiring a minimum drinking age of 21, about 20 of the parents have formed a group called ParentsSOS. Like MADD members, parents carry photos of their children who they say lost their lives to social media, and explain their personal tragedies to lawmakers.
Dozens more parents have created organizations to fight social media addiction, eating disorders and fentanyl poisoning. Everyone is putting pressure on KOSA, invading the Capitol to share how they say their children were harmed.
The bill, introduced in 2022, has bipartisan support in the Senate and is ready for a vote. It recently passed a key vote in a House subcommittee. President Biden also supported the bill.
Dr. Vivek Murthy, the US surgeon general, said this week that social media had contributed to an “emergency” mental health crisis among young people, adding further momentum.
But KOSA still faces major obstacles. Tech lobbyists and the American Civil Liberties Union are fighting it, saying it could undermine free speech. Others worry that limiting children’s access to social media could further isolate vulnerable young people, including those in the LGBTQ community.
To ramp up the pressure as Congress’s summer break approaches in August, ParentsSOS launched a Father’s Day ad campaign in New York’s Times Square and a commercial campaign on streaming TV. (Fairplay, a nonprofit advocacy organization, and the Eating Disorders Coalition provided funding.)
“I’ve had friends tell me, ‘Let it go and move on because it’s so painful,’ but I couldn’t stay silent about what I learned, which is that social media companies have no responsibility,” Kristin said. Bride, 57, who lives in Oregon. Her son Carson committed suicide in 2020 at the age of 16 after what she said had been relentless harassment through an anonymous messaging app connected to Snapchat.
Snap, X and Microsoft have all said they support KOSA.
“Young people’s safety is an urgent priority and we call on Congress to pass the Children’s Online Safety Act,” Snapchat parent company Snap said in a statement. Snap no longer allows anonymous messaging apps to connect to its platform.
YouTube and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, declined to comment. TikTok did not respond to a request for comment.
The parents’ push aligns with a global movement to regulate the safety of young people online. The European Union Digital Services Act 2022 requires social media sites to block harmful content and restricts the use of features that may lead to addictive use by young people. Last year, Britain adopted a similar online safety law for children.
Nationwide, 45 state attorneys general have sued Meta over allegations that it harms young users. Last year, 23 state legislatures adopted child safety laws, and this week New York adopted a law restricting social media platforms’ use of recommendation sources that could lead to compulsive consumption by users under 18 years of age.
Many of the parents-turned-lobbyists cited “The Social Dilemma,” a 2020 documentary about the harms of social media, as a call to action. They said they were also enraged by revelations in 2021 from whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee who testified in Congress that the company knew of the dangers to young people on its apps.
“For the first time I understood that it was the design, it was the companies,” said Christine McComas, 59, who lives in Maryland. She said her daughter Grace committed suicide at age 15 in 2012 after being bullied on Twitter.
Many of the parents said the Center for Humane Technology, a nonprofit that advocates for social media regulations and was part of the documentary, had connected them after they contacted them.
Maurine Molak’s son David committed suicide in 2016 at age 16 after what she said was cyberbullying on Instagram and messaging apps. Another of his children found an online memorial page for Grace McComas and encouraged her mother to contact Mrs. McComas by email.
The two mothers began making phone calls and also connecting with other parents. Ms. Molak had created a foundation to educate the public about online harassment and lobby for passage of state anti-harassment legislation.
By early 2022, some of the parents had begun working with Fairplay to push for state child safety laws. That February, Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tennessee, introduced KOSA.
It had initial but modest support, emerging from a Senate committee before stalling for months. Increasingly impatient, several parents showed up at the Capitol in November. Ms. Bride and other parents said they had entered the office of Senator Maria Cantwell, chairwoman of the Commerce Committee and a Washington Democrat, and demanded a meeting. She joined them the next day.
Cantwell was visibly moved and rubbed the backs of several parents as they talked about their children, Bride said.
“Having to look at us and know that our children are no longer with us hits them and that has brought people on board,” Bride said. Cantwell’s office declined to comment.
Cantwell became a strong supporter of the bill and later attempted to attach it to a year-end spending bill, but failed.
For much of last year, the bill was held up, in part over concerns that language requiring companies to design sites to protect children was too vague. Some lawmakers also worried that the bill gave attorneys general too much power to control certain content, a potential political weapon.
Discouraged, parents called each other to stay motivated. In September, Ms. Schmill rented a short-term apartment a 10-minute walk from the Capitol. She slipped on and off the sneakers she carried in a duffel bag as she visited the offices of nearly 100 senators to talk to them about Becca.
“As I thought about facing another year of his date of birth and death, in order to cope with having to live through another anniversary, I had to feel like I had to do something productive in his memory,” Ms. Schmill said.
Late last year, when the Senate Judiciary Committee announced a January hearing on child safety with technology CEOs, parents decided to form ParentsSOS. The initiative, aimed at helping them gain more support for KOSA, was funded by Fairplay and Ms Molak’s foundation focused on cyberbullying.
The parents, communicating via email, text and via Zoom, decided to attend the child safety hearing to confront executives from Discord, Meta, Snap, TikTok and X with photos of their children.
At the hearing, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., attempted to force Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, to apologize to parents. Zuckerberg turned to the parents and told them that he was “sorry for everything you have been through.”
Todd Minor, a ParentsSOS member who was present, said the apology rang hollow. His 12-year-old son Matthew died in 2019 after participating, Minor said, in a “blackout challenge” on TikTok, in which people drown.
“We need KOSA. It’s that simple,” Minor, 48, said.
The parents then met with Senate Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who promised to bring KOSA to a floor vote by June 20, according to Ms. Schmill and others at the meetings.
In April, the House introduced a companion bill.
Molak, 61, a San Antonio resident, met last month with Rep. Randy Weber, R-Texas, to talk about his son David.
“Why am I not on this bill? Let’s get on with this!” Weber, a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told his staff during the meeting, according to Molak. Weber’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
But progress on that committee stalled this month. The Senate version of the bill still faces opposition.
Ms. Schmill and three of the other parents returned to the Capitol last week.
“I need to stay busy, keep trying,” Schmill said.
If you are having suicidal thoughts, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.
