Senate Commerce Advances COPPA 2.0, With Notable Changes

July 15, 2025

Jessica Arciniega, Morgan Sexton, and Amelia Vance

 

 

 

CC BY-NC 4.0

On June 25th, the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0) was favorably reported out of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

Recap: What is COPPA 2.0? 

COPPA 2.0 is a bill that seeks to update and strengthen safeguards in the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a federal law enacted in 1998 that regulates how commercial operators can collect personal information from children under 13 (see these resources for more information on COPPA generally). 

Senator Markey (a co-sponsor of the bill) explained that COPPA 2.0 would: 

  • “Ban targeted advertising to children and teens;
  • Create an “Eraser Button” by requiring companies to permit users to delete personal information collected from a child or teen;
  • Establish data minimization rules to prohibit the excessive collection of children and teens’ data;
  • Revise COPPA’s “actual knowledge” standard to close the loophole that allows platforms to ignore kids and teens on their site; and
  • Build on COPPA by prohibiting internet companies from collecting personal information from users who are 13 to 16 years old without their consent.”

Our team* also highlights how COPPA 2.0 would increase the age of individuals entitled to foundational privacy protections under COPPA from under 13 to under 17, better aligning protections in COPPA with those in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). This change–combined with COPPA 2.0’s codification of long-standing administrative guidance allowing schools to provide students access to technology when the school has a contract with the edtech vendor and has thoroughly vetted the platform for privacy and security safeguards–would empower schools to demand stricter privacy measures for all students when negotiating agreements with edtech providers.

*As a reminder, PIPC has endorsed COPPA 2.0. 

New COPPA 2.0 Provisions

The Senate Commerce Committee approved COPPA 2.0 language that largely aligns with the version of COPPA 2.0 we saw last July, which passed through the Senate attached to the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) (see our previous redline here). However, the current version of COPPA 2.0 also includes two new amendments from Senators Cruz and Fetterman. While Senator Fetterman’s amendment does not appear to have significant child privacy implications–it is focused on the Comptroller General conducting a study on the privacy and mental health of teens using financial technology products–Senator Cruz’s amendment makes two noteworthy changes to COPPA 2.0’s privacy protections children and teens: 

  1. It removed references to connected devices in the definition of individual-specific advertising, narrowing it to advertising directed only at children or teens based on their personal information or profiling, and excluding device-based targeting. 
  2. It makes it so that targeting based on the device used by a child or teen (including devices shared by multiple household users) is no longer considered individual-specific advertising, thus allowing such advertising practices under the bill.