By Courtney Rozen
WASHINGTON, June 22 (Reuters) - The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee reached a bipartisan agreement on regulating youth social media use, the committee's leaders said in a statement on Monday, a key step in the debate in Washington over how to hold technology companies accountable for the impact of their platforms on young people.
Republican Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie and top committee Democrat Frank Pallone did not release details about the deal, but said it would "hold
Big Tech accountable."
"We worked across the aisle for many months and have now found common ground on policies to significantly improve the digital environment for kids,” Guthrie and Pallone said in a joint statement.
Tech companies are under increasing scrutiny in the U.S. for their effect on youth, with parents and state officials pushing to ban phones from schools to limit access.
The House agreement faces several hurdles before becoming law, including winning support in the Senate and from President Donald Trump. The White House press office did not immediately respond to a request from Reuters about the deal. Speaker Mike Johnson, the top Republican in the U.S. House, supports the agreement, according to a source familiar with his thinking.
At the national level, U.S. lawmakers for years have declined to pass comprehensive legislation regulating social media, prompting states to pass their own laws. At least 20 states enacted laws last year addressing social media use by children, according to the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures, an organization that tracks state bills.
Reuters previously reported that Meta Platforms, which owns Instagram, lobbied the U.S. Congress for legal immunity from child-harm claims tied to social media products. Meta, Google's YouTube, TikTok and Snap are facing thousands of lawsuits accusing them of designing social media platforms that are harmful to young people. If such a provision became law, it would undermine those cases.
Meta and Google's YouTube face a combined $6 million in damages after they lost the first case at trial in California early this year.
(Reporting by Courtney Rozen; Editing by Mark Porter and Sanjeev Miglani)
