Earlier this month, an effort by Big Tech to once again forestall any regulation of its products — no matter the serious harms they cause, even to children — failed in Congress. A provision in the budget reconciliation bill to impose a moratorium on any state laws to regulate AI was stripped from the final version of the legislation in a nearly unanimous Senate vote. 

It was a rare win for those of us pushing for meaningful reforms of Big Tech and their products, like AI and especially social media platforms, because we know all too painfully what the consequences of virtually no regulation have been.

For me, it was the loss of my beautiful firstborn son Max at just 18 years old. On the evening of Jan. 31, 2021, Max bought what he thought was Percocet from a drug dealer who contacted him via Snapchat. This was not someone Max had ever known outside of the platform or could have connected with in any other way. Tragically, the pills were laced with deadly amounts of fentanyl and when Max took just one-eighth of a pill on Feb 2, 2021, he never could’ve known he wouldn’t be waking up the next day. Max’s life ended before it began and our family forever shattered.

Max was a very loving, funny and highly social young man with his whole life ahead of him. He lettered in lacrosse, wrestling and football. Max excelled at anything he set out to do. As long as he was surrounded by friends or family, he was happy. Max was heading into his adult life and couldn’t be more excited to start his next chapter at the University of Colorado Leeds school of Business he was just about to make his mark on the world.

My son’s death is not one from which our family will ever recover. The pain of losing a child is something I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

To help manage my pain, I’ve turned to action. It’s the only thing I can do. Both in fighting to put the drug dealer who killed my son in prison, in suing Snapchat over my son’s death and in advocating for state and national laws to make social media platforms safer.

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I am so grateful to U.S. Sens. Marcia Blackburn (R–Tennessee), Susan Collins (R–Maine), Maria Cantwell (D–Washington) and Ed Markey (D–Massachusetts) for sponsoring the amendment to kill the moratorium on AI regulation. Their leadership on this matter, and on children’s safety online, ensured states can still hold Big Tech accountable for products like AI that endanger children and other consumers. This is absolutely essential given there has been no federal legislation doing so in more than 25 years, despite the significant expansion in that time of digital technologies and online platforms children use daily.

AI itself has proven to be an incredible threat to kids. We know AI bots can lead to children’s severe isolation; that they can start highly inappropriate conversations with kids, even with innocuous prompts; that they can promote content driven by algorithms that celebrate violence or self-harm; that they may provide kids with false, biased or misleading information; and that deep-fakes generated by AI have been used in sextortion schemes targeting minors. 

The risks are so serious this past May our own Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser issued a consumer alert about the dangers of AI chatbots for children. He underscored the concerns listed above as well as worries chatting with these bots can be highly addictive and even compromise children’s privacy.

Although it is the only strategy we have at the moment, the whack-a-mole project of state-by-state regulation of Big Tech products, especially their social media platforms, is insufficient. We desperately need federal laws that do more, like the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which we were so close to passing just one year ago. Last July, the Senate nearly unanimously voted (91-3) to pass this critical, lifesaving bill. They showed keeping kids safe online is a bipartisan, human, issue. It’s not political.

But the bill stalled in the House. Speaker Mike Johnson never brought it to the floor for a vote. He promised to do so in the new year, but so far the bill hasn’t even been introduced in the House.— even though Sen. Blackburn and her co-sponsor, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D–Connecticut), reintroduced the bill in the Senate in May.

Yet, if passed, KOSA would be a complete game changer for American kids and families. In fact, had it been in place when Max was still alive, I believe he would still be with me now. KOSA requires social media platforms change the designs and algorithms of their products that purposefully addict kids to their screens, make them vulnerable to adult predators who would exploit and abuse them, and send them down rabbit holes of noxious content they never asked for in the first place. KOSA also mandates these companies exercise reasonable care in the design of their platforms to mitigate and prevent a specific list of harms like substance abuse, sexual exploitation, cyberbullying, eating disorders, depression, suicide and more.

We were so close last year to seeing this bill finally become law, to seeing our elected leaders in Washington choose our children over Big Tech’s profits. We cannot afford one minute more of inaction.

But children’s lives are not a political game, and we have no time left. Big Tech will only keep trying to evade any and all regulation, as they did with this moratorium on laws related to AI, despite the fact that they know how harmful their products can be — and have been — to children. It’s why so many Big Tech CEOs don’t even let their own children use their products! But they don’t care if our children do, and if our children suffer as a result. So, our lawmakers must care instead, and they must force Big Tech to create safer products, which, if they wanted to, they could easily do. 

So, I am urging our leaders in Congress not to stall one more day. Please. Act. Please pass KOSA now and help us keep our kids safe. It is, actually, your job. And if you do it well, if you do it now, you will save countless lives. What a remarkable legacy that would be. 

Kim Osterman, mother of Max Osterman, forever 18, is a member of Parents for Safe Online Spaces (ParentsSOS) and a strong advocate for social media reform.