Education Technology Round Up
March 27, 2026
Author
Âܲ·AVĘÓƵis a proud member of the National Coalition for Technology in Education & Training. The coalition’s latest wrap up of all things education technology is below; the legislative summary is an excerpt from a longer email, and thus doesn’t have a traditional closing/wrap up.
Technology Policy Legislative and Judicial Developments: It has been a busy first quarter for Congress, the Administration and the courts as all three branches of government grapple with technology policy. Multiple pieces of federal legislation – COPPA 2.0., the Kids Online Safety Act, the Kids Off Social Media Act and the Trump America AI Act – all received attention on Capitol Hill. Meanwhile, the President issued an AI framework that was designed to both provide some guardrails to AI development but also to prevent states from enacting or implementing legislation or regulations that might stifle AI innovation. Finally, two major court decisions found that major social media platforms had created products that harmed minors and, in at least some cases, attempted to cover up those harms. Let’s take these activities one at a time.
Federal Legislation
- Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA): In early March, the House Energy and Commerce Committee held a marathon mark-up where the Committee considered and approved on a party-line vote the newly introduced Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act (HR7757), which contains a House version of KOSA. The bipartisan Senate version of KOSA, introduced by Senators Blackburn (R-TN) and Blumenthal (D-CT), is designed to protect minors, defined as those under 17, from online harms on covered platforms. It takes aim at platforms that have design features that encourage or increase the frequency, time spent, or activity of a user/minor on the covered platform. Among other features, the Senate bill includes a robust duty of care for companies that exposes them to significant legal liability. It also would not pre-empt state law and regulation. Here are three key sticking points:
- Duty of care: The House’s KOSA version, now folded into the KIDS Act, directly states that it does not establish a duty of care for platforms. Instead, it requires only that they “establish, implement, maintain, and enforce reasonable policies, practices, and procedures that address” a shorter list of harms to minors than the Senate bill includes.
- Knowledge Standard: Both bills require covered platforms to provide certain protections for users that they know are minors, including: limiting the ability of other users to communicate with minors; preventing other users from viewing their data; limiting the use of design features that encourage minors to continue using the site; controlling personalized recommendation systems; and restricting the sharing of their geolocation. The Senate bill’s definition of “know” is much stricter than the House’s version. In the Senate companies “know” that minors are on their site if they “have actual knowledge or knowledge fairly implied on the basis of objective circumstances.” In the House bill, a company is held accountable for knowing minors are on their sites if the companies “have actual knowledge or to have acted in willful disregard” of that fact.
- Preemption: The Senate bill preempts state laws but only if they conflict with federal law. Additionally, it allows states to legislate and regulate in this area if they were providing protections greater than provided under federal law. The House bill also preempts any state law, rule or regulation that conflicts with this law, but contains no additional language allowing states to provide greater protections. At the mark-up, additional language was added to the House bill that prevents the preemption of state trespass, contract, tort, product liability, criminal conduct or consumer protection laws.
- The House version may move faster than the Senate’s version as it has already passed through committee and is ready for floor action. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Cruz has suggested that he would try to move on all three bills – KOSA, COPPA 2.0 and KOSMA – soon.
- Children and Teens Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0): Senators Markey (D-MA) and Cassidy (R-LA) introduced COPPA 2.0 last year to amend the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which provides protection to children 13 and under for the online collection, use, and disclosure of their personal information. The Senate bill passed the full Senate in March. A partisan House version of this bill has been introduced but has not yet been approved by the House Commerce Committee. It was abruptly pulled from last month’s mark-up. House Democrats and Republicans are supposedly negotiating language, but no news of a breakthrough has emerged. The Senate and House versions would both: expand COPPA’s protections to teens under the age of 17; make it unlawful for companies to collect, use, disclose to third parties, or maintain personal information collected from children and teens for targeted advertising purposes; require companies to obtain parental consent to collect data from children under 13 but allow them to obtain consent for data collection directly from teens; and give teens the right to delete submitted content. But there are also some major differences between the bills:
- Knowledge Standard: The Senate-passed bill uses a single knowledge standard for determining a company’s legal responsibility for knowing that children or teens are using their site or platform: “actual knowledge or knowledge fairly implied on the basis of objective circumstances” for all operators. The House version and the unintroduced substitute would create two tiers of providers with different knowledge standards, both weaker than the Senate version: 1) large social media companies – “actual knowledge” or “willfully disregarded information that would lead a reasonable and prudent person to determine, that a user is a child or teen”.; and all others – “actual knowledge”.
- Parental/Teen Consent: The Senate bill empowers teens to consent to data collection themselves and to access, correct and delete data. The House version continues to give teens both the right to consent to data collection and the right to privacy, but it also allows parents to access, correct and delete teen data.
- Preemption: The Senate bill allows states to provide greater protection than afforded by the federal law. The House version would create a complete preemptive ban on state or local laws, rules or regulations in this space.
- Kids Off Social Media Act (KOSMA): A bipartisan bill introduced by Senators Cruz (R-TX) and Schatz (D-HI), KOSMA would require all schools receiving E-Rate to block access to social media platforms. Schools could correct any blocking failures before their E-Rate funding was implicated. This bill passed the Senate Commerce Committee, and a House companion measure was just introduced by Representatives Luna ((R-FL) and Schrier (D-WA). During the debate on the KIDS Act, Rep. Schrier (D-WA) offered and withdrew the Kids Off Social Media Act (KOSMA).
Trump AI Framework
- Just last week, The White House released its National Policy Framework for AI, which contains broad legislative recommendations for protecting children, educating students on AI, and state preemption. One section entitled, Protecting Children and Empowering Parents, urges Congress to pass legislation that would:
- “empower parents and guardians with robust tools to manage their children’s privacy settings, screen time, content exposure, and account controls”
- “establish commercially reasonable, privacy protective, age-assurance requirements (such as parental attestation) for AI platforms and services likely to be accessed by minors”
- “require AI platforms and services likely to be accessed by minors to implement features that reduce the risks of sexual exploitation and self-harm to minors”
- “affirm that existing child privacy protections apply to AI systems, including limits on data collection for model training and targeted advertising”
- “avoid setting ambiguous standards about permissible content, or open-ended liability, that could give rise to excessive litigation”; and
- “ensure that it does not preempt states from enforcing their own generally applicable laws protecting children, such as prohibitions on child sexual abuse material, even where such material is generated by AI”.
- On federal preemption, the AI Framework states that: “The federal government must establish a federal AI policy framework to protect American rights, support innovation, and prevent a fragmented patchwork of state regulations that would hinder our national competitiveness, while respecting federalism and State rights.” It urges Congress to “preempt state AI laws that impose undue burdens to ensure a minimally burdensome national standard consistent with these recommendations, not fifty discordant ones.” However, it attempts to protect state general laws “including particular laws to protect children, prevent fraud, and protect consumers.” It allows states to create laws/regulations governing the use of AI in public schools. Immediately after this announcement, Senator Blackburn released a bill discussion draft, entitled the Trump America AI Act, which would combine into a single bill portions of Trump’s AI framework, a version of the Kids Online Safety Act and other new provisions. Blackburn’s bill has several notable features, including:
- It retains the Senate language for a duty of care for companies in the version of KOSA included in her bill.
- It requires AI developers to exercise reasonable care in the design, development, and operation of a chatbot.
- It requires companies to ban minors from using AI chatbots and requires them to use an age verification system towards that end.
- It empowers the US Justice Department, state attorneys general, and private parties to bring lawsuits for harms caused by an AI product for defective design, failure to warn, express warranty, and unreasonably dangerous or defective product claims.
- It contains a variety of preemption language. For the KOSA section, it allows states to legislate on social media platforms unless in direct conflict with KOSA provisions. In a separate general preemption section, it indicates that it would not "preempt any generally applicable law, such as a body of common law or a scheme of sectoral governance, including a law, regulation, or other provision having the force or effect of law that may address artificial intelligence.”
Lawsuits: The State of New Mexico prevailed in its lawsuit against Meta and won a $375 million civil penalty award over its alleged violation of state consumer protection laws. In that suit, the state claimed Meta was aware of and hid potential harms to children on its platforms, including features that allowed child sexual predators to engage in sexual exploitation of minors and that exposed children to dangerous content related to eating disorders and self-harm. Meta will appeal the verdict. In the meantime, a second trial of Meta in New Mexico, this time by a judge only, will determine whether the state is accorded injunctive relief, reportedly including "changes to the design features of the platform itself, real age verification, changes to the algorithm, an independent monitor to oversee those changes.” In California, a plaintiff won a $6 million verdict in her lawsuit against Meta and You Tube. A jury found that features on the companies’ sites were addictive and had harmed her mental health.
