SCREEN Act
Download PDFSponsored by
Rep. Miller, Mary E. [R-IL-15]
ID: M001211
Bill's Journey to Becoming a Law
Track this bill's progress through the legislative process
Latest Action
Forwarded by Subcommittee to Full Committee in the Nature of a Substitute (Amended) by Voice Vote.
December 11, 2025
Introduced
Committee Review
đź“Ť Current Status
Next: The bill moves to the floor for full chamber debate and voting.
Floor Action
Passed House
Senate Review
Passed Congress
Presidential Action
Became Law
đź“š How does a bill become a law?
1. Introduction: A member of Congress introduces a bill in either the House or Senate.
2. Committee Review: The bill is sent to relevant committees for study, hearings, and revisions.
3. Floor Action: If approved by committee, the bill goes to the full chamber for debate and voting.
4. Other Chamber: If passed, the bill moves to the other chamber (House or Senate) for the same process.
5. Conference: If both chambers pass different versions, a conference committee reconciles the differences.
6. Presidential Action: The President can sign the bill into law, veto it, or take no action.
7. Became Law: If signed (or if Congress overrides a veto), the bill becomes law!
Bill Summary
Another brilliant example of legislative theater, courtesy of the esteemed members of Congress. Let's dissect this farce, shall we?
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The SCREEN Act (Shielding Children's Retinas from Egregious Exposure on the Net Act) claims to protect minors from online pornographic content by requiring interactive computer services to adopt and operate technology verification measures. How noble. In reality, it's a thinly veiled attempt to appease moral crusaders and special interest groups while doing little to address the actual issue.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** The bill defines "covered platforms" as entities that create, host, or make available content harmful to minors, with the objective of earning a profit. These platforms must adopt technology verification measures to ensure users are not minors. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will oversee compliance.
Oh, and let's not forget the obligatory findings section, where Congress regurgitates decades-old statistics and Supreme Court decisions to justify their latest attempt at moral policing. It's like they're trying to convince us that this time, they'll finally get it right. Please.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** The usual suspects are affected:
* Interactive computer services (e.g., social media platforms, online content providers) * The FTC, which will be tasked with enforcing this mess * Special interest groups, like the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, who've been lobbying for stricter regulations * And, of course, the politicians themselves, who get to grandstand about protecting children while doing little to address the root causes of the issue
**Potential Impact & Implications:** This bill is a Band-Aid solution that will likely have unintended consequences:
* It may drive online content providers to adopt overly broad or ineffective age verification measures, potentially harming legitimate users and stifling free speech. * The FTC will be tasked with enforcing this law, which could lead to overreach and abuse of power. * Special interest groups will continue to lobby for stricter regulations, further eroding online freedoms. * And, as always, the politicians will pat themselves on the back for "protecting children" while ignoring more pressing issues.
Now, let's follow the money trail. Who's behind this bill? Ah, yes:
* The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) has been a vocal supporter of stricter online regulations. * NCOSE receives funding from various conservative and faith-based organizations, including the Heritage Foundation and the Family Research Council. * These groups have donated generously to the campaigns of the bill's sponsors, including Rep. Miller (R-IL) and Rep. Van Drew (R-NJ).
It's a classic case of "follow the money" – or in this case, follow the moral outrage. The SCREEN Act is just another example of politicians using children as human shields to advance their own agendas and appease special interest groups. How predictable.
Related Topics
đź’° Campaign Finance Network
Rep. Miller, Mary E. [R-IL-15]
Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle
No committee contributions found
Cosponsors & Their Campaign Finance
This bill has 10 cosponsors. Below are their top campaign contributors.
Rep. Van Drew, Jefferson [R-NJ-2]
ID: V000133
Top Contributors
10
Rep. Brecheen, Josh [R-OK-2]
ID: B001317
Top Contributors
10
Rep. LaMalfa, Doug [R-CA-1]
ID: L000578
Top Contributors
10
Rep. Scott, Austin [R-GA-8]
ID: S001189
Top Contributors
10
Rep. Kennedy, Mike [R-UT-3]
ID: K000403
Top Contributors
10
Rep. Crane, Elijah [R-AZ-2]
ID: C001132
Top Contributors
10
Rep. Aderholt, Robert B. [R-AL-4]
ID: A000055
Top Contributors
10
Rep. Babin, Brian [R-TX-36]
ID: B001291
Top Contributors
10
Rep. Rose, John W. [R-TN-6]
ID: R000612
Top Contributors
10
Rep. Ogles, Andrew [R-TN-5]
ID: O000175
Top Contributors
10
Donor Network - Rep. Miller, Mary E. [R-IL-15]
Hub layout: Politicians in center, donors arranged by type in rings around them.
Showing 41 nodes and 45 connections
Total contributions: $440,492
Top Donors - Rep. Miller, Mary E. [R-IL-15]
Showing top 23 donors by contribution amount
Project 2025 Policy Matches
This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document. Higher similarity scores indicate stronger thematic connections.
Introduction
— 5 — Foreword (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensi- tive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists. Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered. In our schools, the question of parental authority over their children’s education is a simple one: Schools serve parents, not the other way around. That is, of course, the best argument for universal school choice—a goal all conservatives and con- servative Presidents must pursue. But even before we achieve that long-term goal, parents’ rights as their children’s primary educators should be non-negotiable in American schools. States, cities and counties, school boards, union bosses, princi- pals, and teachers who disagree should be immediately cut off from federal funds. The noxious tenets of “critical race theory” and “gender ideology” should be excised from curricula in every public school in the country. These theories poison our children, who are being taught on the one hand to affirm that the color of their skin fundamentally determines their identity and even their moral status while on the other they are taught to deny the very creatureliness that inheres in being human and consists in accepting the givenness of our nature as men or women. Allowing parents or physicians to “reassign” the sex of a minor is child abuse and must end. For public institutions to use taxpayer dollars to declare the superiority or inferiority of certain races, sexes, and religions is a violation of the Constitu- tion and civil rights law and cannot be tolerated by any government anywhere in the country. But the pro-family promises expressed in this book, and central to the next conservative President’s agenda, must go much further than the traditional, narrow definition of “family issues.” Every threat to family stability must be confronted. This resolve should color each of our policies. Consider our approach to Big Tech. The worst of these companies prey on children, like drug dealers, to get them addicted to their mobile apps. Many Silicon Valley executives famously don’t let their own kids have smart phones.2 They nevertheless make billions of dollars addicting other people’s children to theirs. TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms are specifically designed to create the digital — 6 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise dependencies that fuel mental illness and anxiety, to fray children’s bonds with their parents and siblings. Federal policy cannot allow this industrial-scale child abuse to continue. Finally, conservatives should gratefully celebrate the greatest pro-family win in a generation: overturning Roe v. Wade, a decision that for five decades made a mockery of our Constitution and facilitated the deaths of tens of millions of unborn children. But the Dobbs decision is just the beginning. Conservatives in the states and in Washington, including in the next conservative Administration, should push as hard as possible to protect the unborn in every jurisdiction in America. In particular, the next conservative President should work with Congress to enact the most robust protections for the unborn that Congress will support while deploying existing federal powers to protect innocent life and vigorously complying with statutory bans on the federal funding of abortion. Conservatives should ardently pursue these pro-life and pro-family policies while recognizing the many women who find themselves in immensely difficult and often tragic situations and the hero- ism of every choice to become a mother. Alternative options to abortion, especially adoption, should receive federal and state support. In summary, the next President has a moral responsibility to lead the nation in restoring a culture of life in America again. PROMISE #2: DISMANTLE THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE AND RETURN SELF-GOVERNANCE TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. Of course, the surest way to put the federal government back to work for the American people is to reduce its size and scope back to something resembling the original constitutional intent. Conservatives desire a smaller government not for its own sake, but for the sake of human flourishing. But the Washington Establishment doesn’t want a constitutionally limited government because it means they lose power and are held more accountable by the people who put them in power. Like restoring popular sovereignty, the task of reattaching the federal gov- ernment’s constitutional and democratic tethers calls to mind Ronald Reagan’s observation that “there are no easy answers, but there are simple answers.” In the case of making the federal government smaller, more effective, and accountable, the simple answer is the Constitution itself. The surest proof of this is how strenuously and creatively generations of progressives and many Repub- lican insiders have worked to cut themselves free from the strictures of the 1789 Constitution and subsequent amendments. Consider the federal budget. Under current law, Congress is required to pass a budget—and 12 issue-specific spending bills comporting with it—every single year. The last time Congress did so was in 1996. Congress no longer meaningfully budgets, authorizes, or categorizes spending.
Introduction
— 876 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise Other conservatives are more skeptical concerning the effect of online expe- rience on the young, comparing the concern about social media to concern about video games, television, and bicycle safety. They point out, as does Cato fellow Jeffrey A. Singer, that the psychiatric profession has yet to designate “internet addiction” or “social media addiction” as a mental disorder in the authoritative Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR).21 These con- servatives also maintain that calling for regulation undermines conservatives’ calls for parental empowerment on education or vaccines as well as personal parenting responsibility. In addition, some of the methods used to regulate children’s internet access pose the risk of unintended harms. For instance, age verification regulations would inevitably increase the amount of data collection involved, increasing privacy con- cerns. Users would have to submit to platforms proof of their age, which raises the risks of data breach or illegitimate data usage by the platforms or bad actors. Limited-government conservatives would prefer the FTC play an educational role instead. That might include best practices or educational programs to empower parents online. Antitrust Enforcement. As is evidenced by a relentless focus on bringing Big Tech lawsuits, state attorneys general (AGs) are far more responsive to their con- stituents than is the FTC. Such a “boots on the ground” approach would benefit the FTC enormously. Practically, this would mean establishing a distinct role in the FTC Chairman’s office focused on state AG cooperation and inviting state AGs to Washington, D.C., to discuss enforcement policy in key sectors under the FTC’s jurisdiction: Big Tech, hospital mergers, supermarket mergers, and so forth. FTC regional offices are substantially more in touch with local issues. Over the past few decades, the reach and influence of regional offices has shrunk dramati- cally. The FTC should consider returning authority to these offices. Some conservatives however are less supportive of this idea. Conservative enthusiasm for the idea of adding regional FTC offices to the states is a break from the majority conservative position. Endorsing the federal government as a pre- mier job creator runs counter to decades of conservative opinion that holds that New Deal agencies and subsequent government bodies should never have been created in the first place, and that their red tape and interference is a dominant cause of economic inefficiency. Republicans used to seethe when Democrats tried to move federal offices into the states. In the early 1990s, House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich fumed about Senator Robert Byrd’s campaign to transfer certain national intelligence facilities to West Virginia, calling it a “pure abuse of power.” Some contributors to this chapter would remind conservatives that the unseen mechanics of redistribution—by which taxpayer money paid to state employees is taken from taxpayers nationwide—is a drag on the economy of the entire country. Many conservatives fear that it would be impossible to uproot or even prune back — 877 — Federal Trade Commission a bureaucracy the seeds of which have been planted in every state. State legislators would struggle to slash funding from agencies that employ and generously pay thousands of their constituents. FTC outposts would tie middle America inex- tricably to big progressive government, remaking the heartland in Washington’s image. It would be anything but decentralization; Americans need policy makers to discipline the arrogance that prevails inside the Beltway, not spread it. It would be “Swamp 2.0”: just as deep and many times as wide. Big Tech and Antitrust. The large internet platforms have transformed the U.S. economy, streamlining consumer purchases, networking billions of people, and altering long-established business practices. Despite their enormous size, they have avoided significant antitrust liability or prosecution. The reasons for this are not entirely clear. It may be because these platforms have been incredibly innovative and have generated tremendous efficiencies for our society, with little to no evidence of traditional consumer harm in the form of higher prices, reduced output, or a lack of innovation. Also, Americans report a high level of satisfaction in and trust regard- ing these companies. The less friendly regulatory environment in the European Union would make a good case study in expansive antitrust law. The continent boasts not one of the top 10 global tech companies, while the U.S. can claim eight.22 Some claim that the recent drop in value of former leader and current antitrust target Meta, along with the rise of new competitors such as Zoom and Chinese-dominated TikTok, indicates that competitive forces are healthy and at work benefiting consumers in the tech space. On the other hand, the platforms challenge traditional economic thinking because arguably the firm structure they employ is radically different, and they create different competition dynamics. First, there is some evidence that the major internet platforms have market power, resulting in increased prices for advertis- ers, costs that very well could be passed onto consumers. For instance, numerous government studies have found evidence of market power.23 And while some data show declining advertising costs, they also show increasing prices in this decade.24 Second, while consumers may report that they like social media, hedonics tells a different story, suggesting that social media and other online activities diminish human happiness. This evidence, while mixed at first,25 appears to have become quite solid: Social media makes Americans less happy.26 Third, internet platforms have not created consumer price increases, but of course they provide free services—and this creates a challenge for antitrust regu- lation. For decades, antitrust economics has been focused on a paradigm in which firm and consumer behavior are modeled as functions of price and output as the primary variables. It may very well be that these models do not fully capture the effect of technologies that enable increasing returns to scale based on data, such
Introduction
— 875 — Federal Trade Commission Protecting Children Online. The FTC has long protected children in a variety of different contexts. Internet platforms profit from obtaining information from children without parents’ knowledge or consent—and social media’s effect on the well-being of American children is well-documented. Around 2012, American teens experienced a dramatic decline in wellness. Depression, self-harm, suicide attempts, and suicide all increased sharply among U.S. adolescents between 2011 and 2019,16 with similar trends worldwide.17 The increase occurred at the same time that social media use moved from rare to ubiquitous among teens,18 making social media a prime suspect for the sudden rise in mental health issues among teens. In addition, excessive social media use is strongly linked to mental health issues among individuals. Several studies strongly support the notion that social media use is a cause, not just a correlation, of subjective well-being and poor mental health.19 Social media and other large platforms form millions of contracts every year with American children. And even though a minor can void most contracts into which he or she enters, most jurisdictions have laws that hold minors accountable for the benefits received under the contract. Thus, children can make enforceable contracts for which parents could end up bearing responsibility. Targeting chil- dren to create potentially harmful contracts or making parents responsible for such contractual relationships is an unfair trade practice. The FTC, therefore, has the authority, interest, and duty to protect children online from such contractual relationships. l The FTC should examine platforms’ advertising and contract- making with children as a deceptive or unfair trade practice, perhaps requiring written parental consent. Currently, the Child Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)20 regulates the information internet firms can obtain from children. COPPA fails because it (1) only protects children under the age of 13, leaving older teenagers completely unprotected and (2) only prohibits platforms from collecting information from a child using “actual knowledge” rather than abiding by the “constructive knowledge” standard, which prohibits collecting information from a user reasonably assumed to be underage. The FTC has rulemaking authority under this statute but has done little with this authority, nor can it—given the statutory constraints. However, l The FTC can and should institute unfair trade practices proceedings against entities that enter into contracts with children without parental consent. Personal parental responsibility is, of course, key, but the law must respect, not undermine, lawful parental authority.
Showing 3 of 4 policy matches
About These Correlations
Policy matches are calculated using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text. A score of 60% or higher indicates meaningful thematic overlap. This does not imply direct causation or intent, but highlights areas where legislation aligns with Project 2025 policy objectives.