The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act in a 267-117 vote on June 29, 2026, a bipartisan bill that updates the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) to apply to teens up to age 17. Representative Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, stated the legislation explicitly allows states to enact and enforce stronger online protections for children and teens. Critics, however, say the bill leaves out a crucial enforcement measure, and concerns had previously been raised that an earlier version would make progress more difficult for lawsuits seeking to hold tech companies accountable.
Expanding COPPA's consent-and-disclosure framework to 17-year-olds layers procedural obligations on platforms without addressing the real-time threat landscape—grooming, sextortion, and CSAM production—that unfolds in private messages and persists regardless of parental notice. A child who has obtained parental consent to join Instagram remains exposed to predators in DMs; a privacy notice does not stop a sextortion demand. Guardii's anti-grooming, anti-sextortion, and anti-CSAM detection modules monitor direct messages across platforms in real time, blocking or flagging hostile contact before it reaches the target and enabling rapid escalation to the appropriate authority, filling the operational enforcement gap the KIDS Act creates by extending age thresholds without equipping parents, schools, or agencies to see the abuse as it occurs.
