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Senate Introduces 3 Bills Targeting Sextortion

Lawmakers introduced three bills targeting child exploitation last week following a Senate hearing on sextortion.

Sextortion encompasses online blackmail schemes in which offenders manipulate people into sharing explicit images of themselves, then threaten to release the photos unless victims comply with their demands.

Perpetrators of sextortion may demand money or sexual satisfaction. Both types disproportionately harm kids and teens.

Authorities believe financially-motivated sextortion, which primarily effects young men, has caused as many as 40 teen boys to take their own lives. One of the most recent victim, athlete and honor-roll student Bryce Tate, committed suicide on November 6, just three hours after a sextortionist made contact. He was 15 years old.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) fielded more than 2,000 reports of sexually-motivated sextortion by an online terrorist group called “764” in the first nine months of 2025 — double the total number of reports received in 2024.

“This trend has led to the most egregious exploitation that NCMEC has ever seen,” executive director Lauren Coffren told the Senate Judiciary Committee at last week’s hearing on “Protecting Our Children Online Against the Evolving Offender.”

Sextortion scams increased in frequency and severity this year, Coffren and other experts testified at the hearing. But law enforcement officials rarely charge these heinous offenders appropriately.

“Right now, when we charge crimes like sextortion or [764’s crimes], across the country, we all charge them differently,” Jessica Lieber Smolar, a former federal prosecutor, explained.

“There’s no consistency that allows us to properly address the specific harm that these actors are committing.”

Senators Chuck Grassley (IA) and Dick Durbin (IL), chairman and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, respectively, introduced three bills empowering prosecutors to fight sextortion following the hearing.

Stop Sextortion Act

The Stop Sextortion Act would amend existing laws against possessing and distributing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) to criminalize sextortion, or “threatening to distribute [CSAM] with the intent to intimidate, coerce, extort or cause substantial emotional distress to any person.”

If passed, the act would make sextortion of a minor punishable by up to ten years in prison — double the current penalty.

The “Take It Down Act,” which President Donald Trump signed into law earlier this year, made sextortion of a minor punishable by up to two and a half years in prison. Unlike the Stop Sextortion Act, however, the Take It Down Act criminalized sextortion by amending the Communication Act of 1934. It did not change laws or sentencing guides directly related to CSAM.

SAFE Act

The Sentencing Accountability for Exploitation (SAFE) Act would modernize the sentencing guides for engaging in CSAM.

“The current CSAM sentencing guideline doesn’t consider modern aggravating factors, allowing some of the most nefarious child abusers to skate by with lesser sentences,” a press release about the bill explains.

The guide would allow judges to impose harsher penalties based on updated indicators of a particularly dangerous offender, including:

  • Whether they belonged to an online group dedicated to CSAM.
  • Whether they concealed their identity online.
  • Whether they engaged with CSAM on multiple online platforms.
  • The length of time they engaged with CSAM.
  • The number of children they victimized.
ECCHO Act

The Ending Coercion of Children and Harm Online (ECCHO) Act would make it a crime to “coerce minors into physically harming themselves, others or animals.” It targets the type of sexually-motivated sextortion, or sadistic online exploitation, committed by offenders like 764.

The FBI describes 764 as a group of “nihilistic violent extremists” which “works to destroy civilized society through the corruption and exploitation of vulnerable populations, which often include minors.”

The group does not engage in financially-motivated sextortion. Instead, members blackmail minors into hurting themselves and others. 764 collects and circulates photos and videos of the abuse as trophies.

“The imagery, the videos, the chats that we are seeing and reading [from 764] are the most graphic that I have ever seen in my 20-year-history,” NCMEC’s Coffren told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The ECCHO Act would make crimes like 764’s punishable by up to 30 years in prison. If a perpetrator caused a minor to kill themselves or someone else, they would face up to life in prison.

As of now, Senators Durbin and Grassley emphasize, “there is no law that explicitly prohibits the coercion of children to hurt themselves or others.”

What Parents Can Do

The Daily Citizen supports laws disincentivizing and punishing child predation. But the proposed bills are a long way from the finish line — and parents must protect their children from sextortion right now.

The most effective way to stymie online predators is to keep your child offline. Parents can delay their child’s introduction to social media by inviting other families to agree to the same boundary. Partnering with others helps parents stay strong and ensures no child feels left out.

Parents with children on social media should make their kids’ accounts private, which means strangers won’t see what they post. Parents should also take advantage of parental controls blocking messages from strangers, if available.

All parents should teach their kids basic internet safety: don’t communicate with someone you don’t know, don’t share information about your identity or location, and never take or share nude images of yourself — ever.

Sextortion poses a threat to every minor with a smartphone or unregulated access to the internet. The Daily Citizen urges parents to take immediate steps to protect their children from this devastating phenomenon.

To learn more about parental controls on social media, visit Focus on the Family’s Plugged In.

Additional Articles and Resources

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Teen Boys Falling Prey to Financial Sextortion — Here’s What Parents Can Do

Meta Takes Steps to Prevent Kids From Sexting

Instagram’s Sextortion Safety Measures — Too Little, Too Late?

‘The Tech Exit’ Helps Families Ditch Addictive Tech — For Good

Australia Bans Kids Under 16 Years Old From Social Media

Australia began enforcing the world’s first social media ban on Wednesday.

The novel policy, which the Australian legislature passed last year, prohibits people under 16 years old from accessing social media. Platforms including Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, X and YouTube must verify their users’ ages or face millions of dollars in fines.

“It’s a profound reform which will continue to reverberate around the world,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reflected.

The results of Australia’s social media ban will determine whether other countries adopt national limitations on minors’ social media use — an approach dismissed by some as too extreme, impractical or difficult to enforce.

But a social media ban need not be perfect to be effective, Jean Twenge, a leading scholar and professor of psychology at San Diego State University, argues in a piece for Generation Tech.

Twenge uses underage drinking laws to illustrate her point. The U.S. law requiring people be 21 years old to consume alcohol does not prevent kids from getting fake IDs, she acknowledges. It did, however, almost immediately decrease alcohol’s popularity with teens. Car crash deaths fell, too.

“The government got better at enforcing the law, and then social norms took over and made it less acceptable to drink while underage,” Twenge explained, predicting:

The same will be true for social media: Enforcement will improve, and eventually the social norm will move away from teens feeling they ‘have’ to be on social media.

Bans like Australia’s also solve a major collective action problem for parents, who often worry their child will be left out or left behind by abstaining from social media.

“Australian parents will be a lot less likely to hear their kids say, ‘But Mum, all of my friends use Instagram! If I’m not on it, I’ll be left out!’” Twenge notes.

The commencement of Australia’s social media ban comes as Americans clamor for more federal laws protecting children online.

This year, Congress considered:

  • The App Store Accountability Act, which would require app stores to verify their customers’ ages.
  • The SCREEN Act, which would require pornography companies to verify the ages of their viewers.
  • The Kids Online Safety Act, which would require social media companies to maintain certain safety standards for minors and communicate more transparently with parents.

The judicial branch signaled new willingness to adjust outdated tech regulations in June, when the Supreme Court declared state level pornography age-verification laws constitutional.

American legislators disagree over how the federal government should regulate social media companies — but none argue social media benefits children and teens.

Mountains of evidence correlate increased screen time and social media use among teens with:

  • Increased feelings of depression, anxiety and loneliness.
  • Lower life satisfaction.
  • Poor sleep and performance in school.
  • Shortened attention span.
  • Low self-esteem.

Former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy recommended mandatory health warnings appear on social media apps in June 2024, citing evidence showing excessive social media use inhibits development of the amygdala and prefrontal cortex — the parts of the brain responsible for self-control, social and emotional maturity, critical thinking and decision making.

In his 2024 book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt found excessive social media use stunts children’s relational development by depriving them of opportunities to resolve conflict, set boundaries, absorb rejection and make eye contact.

Social media companies, meanwhile, strive to maximize the time young people spend on their platforms.  In his analysis of a 2023 poll showing more than half of American teens spend at least four hours a day on social media, Gallup’s Dr. Jonathan Rothwell concluded:

The companies and their software developers intentionally create and implement habit-forming design features, drawn from cognitive and psychological theories such as variable rewards, social reciprocity, infinite scrolling, gamification and others.

Parents don’t need to know everything about America’s shifting legislative position on social media to protect their kids, so long as they remember this critical fact: Social media is bad for children and teens.

The Daily Citizen urges parents to think twice before allowing their child access.

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Child Safety Advocates Push Congress to Pass the Kids Online Safety Act

Congress must pass the bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), child safety advocates say, so parents can better protect their children from sexual exploitation, addiction and myriad other online harms.

The bill, which Senators Marsha Blackburn (TN) and Richard Blumenthal (CT) reintroduced in May, would hold social media companies legally responsible for harming minors. Platforms governed by the bill would fulfill their legal obligations by instituting child safeguards, creating parental controls and increasing transparency.

A similar version of KOSA passed the Senate last year in a near-unanimous, 91-3 vote. It stalled in the House amid First Amendment concerns.

“[KOSA] will compel covered social media companies to center online safety and wellbeing rather than profit alone,” a group of more than 400 organizations representing parents, children, researchers, advocates and healthcare professionals wrote in an October letter encouraging legislators to pass the bill.

Though Senate Majority Leader John Thune (SD) and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (NY) both endorse the bill, the Senate has not voted on KOSA this year.

The Act

KOSA would apply to any interactive website that primarily allows users to post and share content, including social media platforms, video posting sites like YouTube and some interactive video games.

It would require covered platforms to place automatic safeguards on minors’ accounts, like:

  • Limiting who can communicate with minors or view their profiles.
  • Prohibiting other companies from viewing or collecting minors’ data.
  • Limiting addictive features like infinite scrolling, auto-play, algorithmic content recommendations and rewards for spending time on the platform.
  • Restricting location sharing and notifying minors when location-tracking turns on.

It would also force covered platforms to offer parents tools to:

  • Manage their child’s privacy and account settings.
  • Restrict their child’s ability to make purchases or engage in financial transactions.
  • View and limit how much time their child spends on a platform.

KOSA further addresses Big Tech’s lack of transparency. Covered platforms would have to:

  • Warn parents and minors about a platform’s potential dangers.
  • Clearly disclose marketing and advertising content.
  • Explain how they create personal content recommendation algorithms — and how users can opt out.

Companies with more than 10 million users a month, on average, would additionally undergo annual, third-party audits investigating whether their platforms harm children. Parents could read auditors’ findings in mandatory safety reports.

State attorneys general and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) could sue covered platforms for failing to uphold their legal responsibilities under KOSA. The FTC could investigate KOSA violations as “unfair or deceptive business practices.”

First Amendment Concerns

Senators Blackburn and Blumenthal adjusted this year’s version of KOSA to alleviate concerns about government censorship, which contributed to the bill’s failure last year.

Senator Mike Lee (UT), one of just three senators who voted against KOSA in 2024, explained on X:

The legislation empowers the FTC to censor any content it deems to cause “harm,” “anxiety,” or “depression,” in a way that could (and most likely would) be used to censor the expression of political, religious and other viewpoints disfavored by the FTC.

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce tried to alleviate concerns like Lee’s in September 2024 by limiting KOSA’s application to companies making more than $2.5 billion in annual revenue or hosting at least 150 million monthly users.

Though the committee’s revisions eventually passed, many legislators argued the changes gutted KOSA. It never received a vote on the House floor.

This year’s version of the bill specifically prohibits the FTC or state attorneys general from using KOSA suits to illegally censor content. A press release announcing KOSA’s reintroduction reads, in part:

The bill text … further makes clear that KOSA would not censor, limit or remove any content from the internet, and it does not give the FTC or state Attorneys General the power to bring lawsuits over content or speech.
Supporters

Several influential advocates for children’s digital safety support KOSA, including many who regularly appear in the Daily Citizen.

“The Kids Online Safety Act is a powerful tool in parents’ defense of their children,” Tim Goeglein, Vice President of External and Government Relations for Focus on the Family, told the Daily Citizen.

Clare Morrell, fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and author of The Tech Exit, writes:

Parents have been left on their own to try to fend off a massive tech-induced crisis in American childhood from online platforms that are engineered to be maximally addictive. KOSA offers a needed solution by making social media platforms responsible for preventing and mitigating certain objective harms to minors, like sexual exploitation.

Morrell’s The Tech Exit offers parents a blueprint to break their children free of addictive technologies.

Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist and author of The Anxious Generation, argues KOSA “would begin to address the [indisputable harm occurring to children at an industrial scale].”

Haidt’s The Anxious Generation raises alarm bells about the effects of ubiquitous internet access on children’ physical, mental and social wellbeing.

Both houses of Congress must pass KOSA by the end of December. If they do not, parents will have to wait yet another year for the bill’s critical protections.

The Daily Citizen will continue covering this important story.

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Many Parents Still Fail to Monitor Their Kids’ Online Activity, Survey Shows

Most Americans support restricting kids’ access to social media and pornography, this year’s American Family Survey shows. But many parents remain hesitant to monitor their children’s online activity.

Brigham Young University’s annual American Family Survey asks a representative group of 3,000 American adults about economic, cultural and social concerns affecting the family. This year, participants identified “social media, video games [and] other electronic resources” as one of the top five issues families must confront.

Respondents expressed the most concern about porn and social media’s effects on young people. American adults overwhelmingly support government regulations limiting minors’ access to these products.

Per the survey:

  • More than 75% of participants support requiring pornography websites to verify the ages of their consumers.
  • Nearly 80% support requiring social media companies to obtain parents’ consent before allowing a minor to create a social media account.
  • Three in four support holding social media companies legally liable for harm caused by content marketed to minors.

Parents with children under 18 years old living at home also support making technology restrictions part of parenting norms. More than 60% of respondents in this demographic wish other families would implement rules about technology, and half said it would make setting and enforcing their own restrictions easier.  

But the survey also shows many parents don’t limit their children’s access to technology at all — let alone discuss strategies with other parents.

Surveyors asked participants with children under 18 years old in the home whether they implement any of five common technological boundaries: limiting their children’s screen time, restricting the kinds of content they consume, requiring them to keep their online accounts private, restricting who they contact and limiting who they exchange private messages with.

One in five respondents (20%) implement none of these restrictions. Two in five respondents (40%) don’t limit their kids’ screen time. Another 40% don’t police the content their children consume.

Though most participants in this demographic claimed other parents’ rules about technology would help them create and enforce their own rules, only 17% said another parent had influenced them to change a screen time restriction.

One third of respondents said they never talk about managing kids and technology with another parent. Only 13% claim to discuss it frequently.

Ubiquitous technology and internet access make parenting harder. Enforcing technological boundaries can be confusing, thankless and overwhelming — particularly when tech companies frequently undermine parental controls with few consequences.

But these obstacles do not change parents’ duty to protect their children from harmful content and technologies.

Parents, you do not have to allow your children access to smartphones or the internet. If you choose to do so, you must be prepared to:

  • Police your child’s online activity.
  • Educate yourself about parental controls and implement them to the best of your ability.
  • Warn your child about online predation and other pitfalls.
  • Model healthy relationships with technology.

Joining forces with other parents to limit children’s access to social media and smartphones can help families create and maintain healthy boundaries with technology. Take it upon yourself to initiate these partnerships. Odds are, you will not be rebuffed.

For more tips and tricks, check out Plugged In’s Parent’s Guide to Today’s Technology. For more information about technology restrictions — or ditching smartphones altogether — read the articles below.

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New York Legislature Passes Bill Requiring Social Media Warning Labels

It’s no secret websites like Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and Facebook have a chokehold on America’s youth. That’s why New York lawmakers have passed a bill requiring social media platforms to display mental health warning labels to in-state users.

Senate Bill S405 cites a June 2024 statement from U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, calling for warning labels on “addictive” platforms:

Requiring social media apps with certain particularly noxious design features to display warning labels to all users at the point of user access … is a reasonable and necessary step to take for consumer health and safety.

The legislation references Surgeon General Murthy’s characterization of the current youth mental crisis as a “public health emergency,” and cites various evidence to support this claim:

Research shows that social media exposure overstimulates reward centers, creating pathways comparable to those of an individual experiencing substance abuse or gambling addictions.
Leaked company documents reveal that social media companies knew that compulsive use of their products was also associated with “loss of analytical skills, memory formation, contextual thinking, conversational depth, (and) empathy.”
Among female adolescent users, the association between poor mental health and social media use is now stronger than the association between poor mental health and binge drinking, obesity, or hard drug use.

Additionally, the bill included several statistics supporting the correlation between social media and poor mental health:

  • As of 2023, 12 – 15-year-olds spend an average of 4.8 hours on social media platforms.
  • Today, almost half of adolescents report social media makes them feel worse about their bodies.
  • Teens with the highest levels of social media use are twice as likely to rate their mental health as either “poor” or “very poor.”
  • From 2008 – 2015, the percentage of hospital visits among adolescent social media users nearly doubled due to suicidal ideation or attempts.
  • From 2011 – 2018, self-poisonings among 10 – 12-year-old girls quadrupled.
  • From 2011 – 2018, suicide rates among 10 – 14-year-old girls doubled, and hospital admissions for self-harm tripled.

State Assemblywoman Nily Rozic, a sponsor for the New York bill, commented:

By requiring clear warning labels, we’re giving families the tools to understand the risks and pushing tech companies to take responsibility for the impact of their design choices.
It’s time we prioritize mental health over engagement metrics.

Additionally, Jim Steyer, Common Sense Media Founder and CEO, stated:

We owe it to families to provide clear, evidence-based information about the consequences of excessive use.
When we learned alcohol could cause birth defects, we added warning labels for pregnant women. When nicotine was linked to cancer, we labeled every cigarette pack.
It’s time we took the same approach to social media – the latest addictive product that has kids hooked.

Last week, Senate Bill S4505 was passed in the New York Assembly and Senate. It is currently awaiting the signature of New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, who previously signed bills prohibiting social media platforms from exposing teens to “addictive” algorithmic content without parental consent. 

If passed, New York will join other states that have or are attempting to issue warnings on social media apps, including Minnesota, Texas, Colorado and California.

Social media platforms have opposed New York’s potential bill, arguing that requiring warning labels on their websites would violate their rights to free speech.

Specifically, NetChoice’s Amy Bos, director of state and federal affairs, recently stated:

The proposed legislation constitutes an unprecedented expansion of government power that would compel private companies to espouse the state’s preferred messaging, a clear violated of the First Amendment’s protection against compelled speech.

However, warning labels on products proven to be harmful do not violate free speech. Rather, they serve to promote truth and transparency by notifying adolescents of the risks associated with social media use.

In a world where internet reliance is ever-increasing, it is crucial for the next generation to be fully informed about the information that constructs and influences their daily lives.

Related Articles and Resources:

‘The Tech Exit’ Helps Families Ditch Addictive Tech – For Good.

New York Prepares to Restrict School Smartphone Use

Social Psychologist Finds Smartphones and Social Media Harm Kids in These Four Ways

Four Ways to Protect Your Kids from Bad Tech, From Social Psychologist Jonathan Haidt

‘Big Tech’ Device Designs Dangerous for Kids, Research Finds

Surgeon General Recommends Warning on Social Media Platforms