The Kids Online Safety Act requires social media platforms and similar websites to protect children and teenagers from online harms. The law applies to any publicly available platform where people create accounts, share content, and interact with each other—basically the major social media sites most young people use.

Platforms must establish policies to prevent several specific harms to minors: threats of physical violence, sexual exploitation and abuse, the distribution or sale of drugs and alcohol, and financial scams. They also must provide safety tools that minors can use to limit who contacts them and to reduce addictive features like infinite scrolling and notifications. For children under 13, parents get special control tools—they can see and change privacy settings, restrict purchases, and monitor how much time their child spends on the platform. These parental controls must be turned on by default for young children.

Platforms must make it easy for anyone to report harmful content and respond to reports within 10 days (or immediately if there's an immediate danger). They also cannot advertise drugs, alcohol, tobacco, gambling, or cannabis to minors. Every year, platforms must hire an independent auditor to check whether they're following these rules and submit a report to the Federal Trade Commission. The law takes effect 18 months after it's signed, and it preempts any state laws that try to regulate the same issues.