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When Kathy Borum hugged 17-year-old Vaughn-Thomas goodnight on a December night three years ago, the Tennessee mom didn’t know she was holding her son for the last time.
A hard-working student and talented athlete, Vaughn-Thomas had just come home from the gym before getting ready for bed.
But to cope with the stress of school, he did something that has tragically become all too common among minors: He ingested a Xanax laced with fentanyl that he likely acquired via Snapchat.
When he didn’t wake up from his alarm the next morning, Kathy discovered that her son had fatally overdosed.
For years, my colleagues and I on the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees have heard similar heartbreaking stories from parents across the country who have lost their children to social media harms.
What Kathy told me about her son is the tragic truth for so many of these victims: “One mistake should not have been a death sentence.”
Yet these tragedies are happening every single day because Big Tech would rather put profit over children’s safety.
For years, platforms from Facebook and Instagram to Snapchat and TikTok have developed addictive algorithms to keep children scrolling as long as possible.
As a result, teens are on average spending 8.5 hours a day on their screens — and suffering rising rates of anxiety, depression and suicide.
At the same time, the algorithms are exposing children to unthinkable harms, including pro-suicide content, drug dealers and human traffickers.
Just in October, reports emerged showing that TikTok developed addictive algorithms even as company executives privately acknowledged the features led to mental health issues, including loss of memory and cognition.
At the same time, the platform fed self-harm and eating disorder content to minors while failing to remove posts promoting drug abuse and pedophilia.
Although TikTok’s impending US ban may end the Chinese-owned app’s dangers, many other social media platforms are also completely neglecting minors’ safety.
Earlier this year, for example, internal documents released through a state attorneys general lawsuit revealed that sexual predators on Facebook and Instagram sent sexually abusive content, including graphic images, to roughly 100,000 minors each day.
But when employees raised the alarm that Meta’s “People You May Know” algorithm connected minors with potential child predators, top executives ignored their warnings.
One thing is clear: Big Tech’s reckless disregard for children must come to an end — and Congress is on the cusp of ensuring that happens.
In July, the Senate passed the Kids Online Safety Act with an overwhelming, bipartisan 91-3 majority.
The legislation, which I led alongside Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), would provide parents and children with tools, safeguards and transparency to protect against online harms.
The legislation would create a duty of care for online platforms to prevent specific dangers to minors, including the promotion of suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse and sexual exploitation.
If enacted, KOSA would mark the first law to protect children in the virtual space since 1998, and provide safeguards for minors that are required for almost every other industry.
For months, however, KOSA has stalled in the House of Representatives because of blatant falsehoods peddled by the Big Tech lobby — including the lie that the legislation will lead to censorship.
To put this false narrative to rest, Sen. Blumenthal and I worked with Elon Musk and X CEO Linda Yaccarino to update the bill’s text, making clear that KOSA will safeguard free speech while protecting children online.
The changes include language stipulating the law does not permit the government to penalize companies based on users’ viewpoints, nor does it alter existing protections for third-party content under Section 230.
In addition, the new text narrows the law’s duty-of-care application regarding anxiety and depression, provides more guidance for platforms regarding those obligations, and ensures that audits under the legislation will solely focus on platform design — not content.
The revised text reflects X’s publicly stated goal of furthering open expression without fear of censorship. It immediately received the support of another free speech champion: Donald Trump Jr.
With the new Congress beginning Jan. 3, there is precious little time left to get KOSA across the finish line.
That’s why I recently joined my Senate Commerce Committee colleagues, including Chairwoman Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Ranking Member Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and Sen. Blumenthal, in calling on House leadership to hold a vote on KOSA before year’s end.
This is a matter of our children’s well-being. Too much is at stake to punt it into the new year.
I will remain in Washington as long as it takes to get KOSA passed so President Trump can implement its protections on Day 1, ensuring that social media is not a death sentence for any child ever again.
Marsha Blackburn (R) represents Tennessee in the US Senate.