President Biden Urges Congress to Prioritize Children's Online Privacy and Focuses on Transparency

At the State of the Union on February 7, President Biden reiterated the need to protect children online and address social media's mental health impact on children.

President Biden's comments largely his first State of the Union address in 2022, in which Biden said it was time to end “the national experiment they’re conducting on our children for profit.” However, ahead of this year's address, the White House released a fact sheet presenting a renewed case for protecting kids online and embracing regulations popularized in the United Kingdom.

President Biden called for bipartisan support to ban targeted advertising for children and young people online, and demanding transparency about tech companies’ algorithms and how they collect Americans’ personal data.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on protecting kids online next week. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) recently took over as chairman of the committee’s investigations panel, where he vowed to continue work on kids’ privacy.