The Democrat from Massachusetts, who has long championed consumer privacy and become a key adversary of tech companies like Meta for monetizing user data, joined a Zoom call Tuesday evening to rally support for two bills he said would protect kids from being manipulated by social media algorithms. But he also brought some bad news: The legislation had “stalled” in Washington despite bipartisan support. 

Advocates this week are making a push to get the bipartisan bills — the Kids Online Safety Act and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act 2.0 — across the finish line. In a letter on Monday, 145 groups including Fairplay and Common Sense Media urged lawmakers to pass the legislation in the interests of protecting youth mental health, now considered at an all-time low in this country. 

But Markey seemed to lay out a path requiring Herculean effort. 

“Only the paranoid survive,” Markey said, adding that the legislation would pass if its supporters — and youth activists in particular — called their lawmakers and demanded they “pull this out of the pile of issues” and give it priority. “We’re going to try to get it over the finish line, but we need you to just have your energy level go higher and higher for these final couple of months and we will get it done.”

The legislative push comes a year after a Facebook whistleblower disclosed research showing that the social media app Instagram had a harmful effect on youth mental well-being, especially for teenage girls. The whistleblower, Frances Haugen, to regulate social media companies — Meta owns Facebook and Instagram — that she accused of pursuing “astronomical profits” while knowingly putting its users at risk. revealed the company knew Instagram made “body image issues worse for one in three teen girls” who blamed the social media platform for driving “increases in the rate of anxiety and depression” and, for some, suicidal thoughts. 

The would make tech companies liable if they expose young people to content deemed harmful, including materials that promote self-harm, eating disorders and substance abuse. It would also require parental controls that could be used to block adult content and to study systems to verify users’ age “at the device or operating system level.”

The , which expands a law that Markey championed in 1998 to cover older teens, would ban targeted advertisements directed at children and require companies to offer an “eraser button” that allows children and teens to remove their personal data. 

But deep-pocketed tech companies, Sen. Richard Blumenthal said Tuesday, are standing in the way. 

“Our obstacles here are the big tech lobbyists,” he said. “They have armies of lobbyists. They pay them, they pay them very well. They hire them to block this legislation.”

While the legislation is designed to protect kids, some digital privacy experts say the rules could come with significant unintended consequences — and could lead to an age-verification system where all web users are made to submit documentation like a driver’s license, requiring them to hand over personal information to tech companies. 

On the Zoom call to bolster support for the bills was Vinaya Sivakumar, a high school senior from Ohio, who created her first social media profile when she was 12. What started out as being harmless, she said, quickly took a toll on her health. 

“It just snowballed into something that constantly perpetuated actions and thoughts like self-harm and eating disorders and it was really never let out of my sight,” said Sivakumar, referring to a stream of content she found harmful being fed to her by algorithms. “It almost encouraged me to make decisions that I didn’t necessarily feel were mine and my mental health was in the worst state ever.”

Kristin Bride, a mother and digital safety advocate from Oregon, implored lawmakers to pass the legislation for kids like her 16-year-old son Carson, who died by suicide in 2020 after he was “visciously bullied” by other kids on Snapchat who used third-party apps to conceal their identities. Last year, Bride , the company that owns the social media app Snapchat, and accused it of lacking safeguards to protect children from harassment. In response, Snap suspended two of the apps, Yolo and LMK. But , NGL, has since cropped up. 

“Until social media companies are held accountable for their harmful products, they will always put profit over people,” Bride said, “and kids like Carson and so many others are just collateral damage.” 

Despite the heightened focus in Washington around digital rights and tech companies’ use of user data for targeted advertising, broader digital privacy legislation has also struggled this year. which would create a national digital privacy standard and limit the personal data that tech companies can collect about users, has hit roadblocks, from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. 

Earlier this month, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission for violating European Union data privacy laws. The commission has been investigating the company for an Instagram setting that automatically sets the profiles of teenagers as public by default. 

Meanwhile, Meta has begun to roll out , including that automatically routes new users younger than 16 to a version with limits on content deemed inappropriate.

The childrens’ safety legislation, which would strengthen rules that haven’t been updated for decades, has received support from a broad range of groups focused on youth well-being, including and the American Psychological Association and The Jed Foundation. from digital rights advocates including the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In that while lawmakers deserve credit “for attempting to improve online data privacy for young people,” the plan would ultimately “require surveillance and censorship” of children and teens “and would greatly endanger the rights, and safety, of young people online.” 

“Data collection is a scourge for every internet user, regardless of age,” the report notes, but the legislation could ultimately force tech companies to further track their users. “Surveillance of young people is , even in the healthiest household, and is not a solution to helping young people navigate the internet.”

Disclosure: Campbell Brown oversees global media partnerships at Meta. Brown co-founded ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ  and sits on its board of directors.

A group of Democratic lawmakers has demanded that several education technology companies that monitor children online explain their business practices, arguing that around-the-clock digital surveillance demonstrates “a clear invasion of student privacy, particularly when students and families are unable to opt out.”

In to last week, Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Ed Markey and Richard Blumenthal asked them to explain steps they’re taking to ensure the tools aren’t “unfairly targeting students and perpetuating discriminatory biases,” and comply with federal laws. The letters went to executives at Gaggle, Securly, GoGuardian and Bark Technologies, each of which use artificial intelligence to analyze students’ online activities and identify behaviors they believe could be harmful.

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“Education technology companies have developed software that are advertised to protect student safety, but may instead be surveilling students inappropriately, compounding racial disparities in school discipline and draining resources from more effective student supports,” the lawmakers wrote in the letters. Though the tools are marketed as student safety solutions — and grew rapidly as schools shifted to remote learning during the pandemic — there’s . Some critics, including the lawmakers, argue they may do more harm than good. “The use of these tools may break down trust within schools, prevent students from accessing critical health information and discourage students from reaching out to adults for help, potentially increasing the risk of harm for students,” the senators wrote.

The letters cited a recent investigation by ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ, which outlined how Gaggle’s AI-driven surveillance tool and human content moderators subject children to relentless digital surveillance long after classes end for the day, including on weekends, holidays, late at night and over the summer. In Minneapolis, the company notified school security when it identified students who made references to suicide, self-harm and violence. But it also analyzed students’ classroom assignments, journal entries, chats with friends and fictional stories.

Each of the companies offer differing levels of remote student surveillance. Gaggle, for example, analyzes emails, chat messages and digital files on students’ school-issued Google and Microsoft accounts. Other services include students’ social media accounts and web browsing history, among other activities.

The letters were particularly critical of the tools’ capacity to track student behaviors 24/7 — including when students are at home — and their ability to monitor students on their personal devices in some cases.

Schools’ use of digital monitoring tools has become commonplace in recent years. More than 80 percent of teachers reported using the tools, according to a recent survey by the Center for Democracy and Technology. Among those who participated in the survey, nearly a third reported that they monitor student activity at all hours of the day and just a quarter said it was limited to school hours.

“Because of the lack of transparency, many students and families are unaware that nearly all of their children’s online behavior is being tracked,” according to the letters. “When students and families are aware, they are often unable to opt out because school-issued devices are given to students with the software already installed, and many students rely on these devices for remote or at-home learning.”

A Securly spokesperson said in an email the company is “reviewing the correspondence received” by the lawmakers and is in the process of responding to their requests for information. He said the company is “deeply committed to continuously evolving our technology” to help schools protect students online. A Gaggle spokesperson said the company appreciates the lawmakers’ interest in learning how the tool “serves as an early warning system to help school districts prevent tragedies such as suicide, acts of violence, child pornography and other dangerous situations.” A GoGuardian spokesman said the company cares “deeply about keeping students safe and protecting their privacy.”

Bark officials didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The Clinton-era , passed in 2000, requires schools to filter and monitor students’ internet use to ensure they aren’t accessing material that is “harmful to minors,” such as pornography. Student privacy advocates have long argued that a newer generation of AI-driven tools go beyond the law’s scope and have urged federal officials to clarify its requirements. The law includes a disclaimer noting that it does not “require the tracking of internet use by any identifiable minor or adult user.” It “remains an open question” as to whether schools’ use of digital tools to monitor students at home violates Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, according to a by the Future of Privacy Forum.

In their letters, senators highlighted how digital surveillance tools could perpetuate several educational inequities. For example, the tools could have a disproportionate impact on students of color and further uphold longstanding racial disparities in student discipline.

“School disciplinary measures have a long history of disproportionately targeting students of color, who face substantially more punitive discipline than their white peers for equivalent offenses,” according to the letters. “These disciplinary records, even when students are cleared, may have life-long harmful consequences for students.”

Meanwhile, the tools may have a larger impact on low-income students who rely on school technology to access the internet than those who can afford personal computers. Elizabeth Laird, the director of equity in civic technology at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said their research “revealed a worrisome lack of transparency” around how these educational technology companies track students online and how schools rely on their tools.

“Responses to this letter will help shine a light on these tools and strategies to mitigate the risks to students, especially those who are most reliant on school-issued devices,” she said in an email.