The App Store Accountability Act sounds like a parental rights bill. It is not. At its core, the ASAA requires app store operators, primarily Apple and Google, to verify the age of every user before allowing them to download an app. Not just children. Every American.

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To verify age, platforms must collect identity data. That data doesn't disappear after verification. It gets stored, shared with developers, and absorbed into the same commercial infrastructure that privacy advocates have spent years trying to reform. The bill doesn't shrink the data collection problem. It expands it with a government mandate attached.

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The organizations pushing the ASAA present themselves as parent advocates. The funding and coalition membership tell a different story. The Digital Childhood Alliance, the primary coalition behind this legislation, counts among its members the Heritage Foundation, the American Principles Project, the Family Policy Alliance, and the Institute for Family Studies. These are not grassroots parent organizations. They are established policy advocacy groups with their own legislative agendas. The coalition also includes dozens of anti-human trafficking organizations that joined around genuine child safety concerns.

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The ASAA fails children because it addresses the wrong problem. Children are not harmed by the app store download process. They are harmed by what happens inside apps; by algorithmic design that prioritizes engagement over wellbeing, by unsupervised access to dangerous content, and by platforms that collect and monetize their behavioral data. The ASAA does nothing to address any of that. What it does is create a government-mandated identity verification system that requires hundreds of millions of adults to submit personal data to access apps they already use legally. That is not child safety. That is surveillance infrastructure with a child safety label on it.