Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act
Current understanding
The Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (S836, 119th Congress) would extend federal online privacy protections — historically covering children under 13 under COPPA — to teenagers, adjusting notice, consent, and data-handling obligations for operators of online services directed to or knowingly used by minors. For individuals, it would broaden the age range of users afforded heightened data-rights protections; for companies, it would extend COPPA-style compliance duties (consent, data minimization, deletion) to a wider teen user base. As of March 16, 2026, the bill was held at the desk (introduced status).
Evidence log
- 2026-07-13 — KIDS Act: cross-connection with kids-act: Complementary minor-protection tracks: KIDS Act mandates default design safeguards and parental controls across platforms/games/chatbots, while CTOPPA extends COPPA-style data-handling and consent rules to teens. (novelty: 3)
- 2025-12-11 — Kids Online Safety Act: cross-connection with kids-online-safety-act: KOSA’s duty-of-care and design-mandate approach complements CTOPPA’s extension of COPPA-style consent and data-handling rules to teens, layering platform-conduct obligations over a statutory privacy floor. (novelty: 2)
- 2026-07-28 — A bill to establish protections for minors who use companion artificial intelligence chatbots, and for other purposes.: cross-connection with companion-ai-chatbot-minor-protections-s5154: Both extend federal child-protection duties to new digital contexts — CTOPPA broadens COPPA-style consent to teens across online services, while S5154 creates a companion-AI-specific safeguard regime for minors. (novelty: 3)
- 2026-03-16 — Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act: cross-connection with child-online-safety-software-access: Both address minors’ online data protections but via different mechanisms: COPPA extension (statutory consent/data-handling floor) vs. Sammy’s Law (parental-monitoring API interoperability). (novelty: 2)