Every Day Without KOSA Puts More Kids at Risk
By Amy Neville
Drug Awareness Week is a time to educate and take action. For my family, it's also a reminder of our loss and our mission to educate other families about the lethal dangers of online harms that our kids face today.
I lost my son, Alexander Neville, to fentanyl poisoning when he was just 14 years old. He connected with a dealer on Snapchat and purchased what he thought was an oxycodone pill. Instead, that pill — counterfeit with fentanyl, made to look like an oxycodone — took his life. Since then, I’ve been fighting alongside other survivor parents to prevent other families from experiencing the same unimaginable loss.
Open online messaging platforms like Snapchat, Telegram, and Instagram have become a breeding ground for illicit drug sales, allowing dealers to connect directly with minors with virtually zero oversight. Reports suggest 60% of teens have been exposed to drug-related content online, and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has also corroborated that dealers use social media to distribute fake prescription pills laced with deadly fentanyl.
Social media companies like Meta claim they have taken steps to make their platforms safer. I was in the room when Mark Zuckerberg was forced to apologize to us during a Senate hearing in January 2024, yet there has been little action to address online safety while kids like Alex continue to suffer, or worse, lose their lives. This is why we need Congress to reintroduce and pass the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) without delay.
Last summer, the Senate passed KOSA in a landslide 91-3 vote—evidence that keeping our kids safe online transcends partisan politics. This is a human issue, and there is no doubt that KOSA will save lives. KOSA is a bipartisan, common-sense bill that would require social media platforms to address exploitative algorithms that expose kids to harmful content and enable illegal activities on their platforms.
At the end of last year, Speaker Mike Johnson promised action on KOSA in early 2025. Now, we need Congress to make good on that promise. Every day they wait, more children are put at risk. It’s time to pass KOSA.
