"Technology may shape the environment our children experience, but parents shape the foundation they stand on. Parents are the firewall keeping kids safe." - Julie Barrett

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Supporters say the App Store Accountability Act protects children. We believe the facts tell a different story. Here's how the bill's promises compare to its real-world consequences.

<h2>The App Store Accountability Act.</h2>

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"Restores Parental Authority"

"Requires Anonymized Age Data"

"Protecting our Right to Quality Care"

"Closes Dangerous Loopholes"

"Balances Safety and Privacy"

ASAA They/Us

<h1>News</h1>

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Our mission is to protect children and defend parental rights by equipping families and citizens with the tools to keep kids safe online. We oppose government surveillance disguised as child safety legislation and seek to build an informed, independent parent-led coalition to #ProtectKidsOnline.

<h1>Protecting Kids Online.</h1>

Our mission is to protect children and defend parental rights by equipping families and citizens with the tools to keep kids safe online. We oppose government surveillance disguised as child safety legislation and seek to build an informed, independent, parent-led coalition to #ProtectKidsOnline.

<h1>Protecting Kids Online</h1>

<h2>Real Crisis. Wrong Solution.</h2>Children are spending too much time online, accessing dangerous content without supervision and experiencing real harm to their mental health and development. Many parents do not know which safety tools are available or how to use them. This is a real crisis—but many of the legislative solutions being proposed could make it worse.

<h2>Real child safety starts with informed, empowered parents—not government overreach.</h2>Across the country, the same legislative frameworks are appearing in statehouse after statehouse. Although promoted as child safety measures, many require identity or age verification from every American who wants to download an app, access social media, or use an online platform. These mandates do not address the practices causing harm to children. Instead, they create surveillance infrastructure, increase the collection of sensitive data, and shift authority away from parents.

Big Tech

Parents are the firewall.The decisions being made today will shape the digital world our children inherit tomorrow. Together, we can fight for real child safety—without sacrificing privacy, parental authority, or constitutional freedoms.Make a secure donation today and help us protect the next generation.

<h2>We&apos;re grateful for your donations!</h2>

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From app store age verification to AI safeguards, student data privacy, and parental rights, we monitor the policies and technologies shaping children's digital lives—and advocate for solutions that protect both kids and constitutional freedoms.

<h1>Issues</h1>

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We equip parents to protect their children online.

<h2>Four Pillars - One Mission</h2>

The data privacy and security risks of the legislation proposed to protect children actually create greater risk.

<h2>Expose</h2>

In hearing rooms, on social media, with lawmakers and industry leaders who oppose Digital ID mandates, wherever decisions about your family are being made.

<h2>Engage</h2>

Parents who understand what bills actually do and what data platforms, schools, and AI tools actually collect cannot be manipulated by emotional framing.

<h2>Educate</h2>

The parent voice is the most powerful force in a room. We train and prepare parents with testimony guides, action alerts, parental control resources, and school data request tools—turning knowledge into action for every parent who wants to fight back.

<h2>Empower</h2>

<h2>Your priority here</h2>

Pilars

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<h2>What's the AI Chatbot Compliance Template?</h2>Every few months, a new bill arrives promising to protect kids from predatory AI chatbots. Different sponsor, different state, different name: GUARD Act, CHATBOT Act, Florida’s AI Bill of Rights (SB 482), WA’s ESHB 2225. Read past the press release, and they all build the same thing.At the core of every one of these bills is the same five-part structure: an identity gate, a categorical restriction for minors, an ongoing monitoring system, a data carve-out for the vendors who run it, and a definition of "AI chatbot" broad enough to cover almost anything with a text box. The names change, but the architecture does not.The identity gate.Before any of these bills can restrict what a minor does, they first have to establish who is a minor. That requirement takes different forms (government ID verification, parental consent at account creation, a "known minor" trigger), but the function is identical. You cannot enforce an age-based rule without first collecting the age of every user.Some versions state plainly that they require age verification. Others state plainly that they don't, then build a "knows" standard instead: a platform is only obligated to act once it "knows," or once knowledge is "fairly implied," that a user is a minor. That sounds like a lower bar, but in practice it's the same gate wearing a different label. A platform that cannot demonstrate it knows its minor users faces the enforcement risk, so age-detection infrastructure gets built anyway, just without the word "mandate" attached to it. The categorical restriction.Once the gate exists, the bill uses it. Outright bans on AI companions for minors. Blocked content categories. Restricted "engagement techniques." Consent requirements before a minor can use a chatbot at all. This is the part of the bill that gets quoted in the press release, and it's the part that's easiest to support; nobody wants a fourteen-year-old in a romantic relationship with a chatbot.But the restriction only exists downstream of the gate. Support the restriction, and you've already accepted the identity infrastructure required to enforce it. The monitoring problem.This is where these bills go further than most people realize. Beyond the one-time gate, the compliance architecture requires ongoing behavioral tracking: repeating AI disclosures on a timed schedule, retained conversation transcripts, parental dashboards, and crisis-detection protocols that flag anything read as an expression of self-harm or distress.That last piece deserves its own scrutiny. A real-time system built to detect and report a minor's emotional state to a parent, or, in some cases, to a state agency, is a surveillance mechanism regardless of the intention behind it. None of these bills specify what happens to the underlying transcript once a flag is triggered, whether it becomes discoverable in a custody dispute, or whether the platform becomes a mandatory reporter based on what a child told a chatbot rather than what a child told a person. The vendor exemption.Every one of these bills contains data minimization language; encryption, retention limits, no selling of verification data. Read the next clause and the protections apply only to the platform itself, not to the third-party identity verification vendors the bill explicitly permits the platform to hire. The companies actually holding the government ID or biometric data operate under their own privacy policy, not the bill's. Several versions say nothing at all about whether transcript data can be used to train the AI model that generated it.The elastic definition."AI chatbot" or "AI companion" is defined broadly enough in most of these bills to sweep in general-purpose tools such as a homework helper, a customer service bot, or a research assistant alongside the companion apps the bill is nominally targeting. That ambiguity isn't incidental. A narrow definition would require narrow infrastructure. A broad one requires the same identity and monitoring architecture to be built for every AI product a minor might touch.What real protection would look like.A bill built to protect kids from AI chatbots would target harmful design choices directly: sexualized companion products, manipulative engagement mechanics, deceptive human impersonation, without requiring an identity and behavioral-tracking system for every user, adult and minor, to get there. It would hold a company accountable when its product caused documented harm to a specific child. It would not require a permanent data architecture on every child as the price of catching the harm that architecture was supposedly built to prevent.None of the bills built on this template do that. They deliver the identity infrastructure first and the child-safety outcome as a byproduct, if at all.What parents can do today.You don't need this architecture to protect your child from an AI chatbot right now. Device-level parental controls, app restrictions, and direct conversation about what your child is doing online are available today, with no new data collection on your family required. An engaged parent is still the most effective safeguard that exists. No compliance template, federal or state, replaces that.If a legislature wants to act, the mechanism has to match the harm. So far, none of them have.

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The ASAA promises child safety but expands surveillance while ignoring the real risks children face online.

<h4>Key Concerns </h4>

What's the AI Chatbot Complian

<h2>Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA)</h2>Expands government influence over online speech while doing little to address the root causes of harm facing children.

BB3: KOSA

Understanding age verification policies.Why Age‑Verification Mandates Lead to Digital ID Systems, Data Risks, and Expanded Government Power.

Digital ID Pipeline

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<h4>Nonpartisan</h4>

<h4>Independent</h4>

<h4>Accountable</h4>

<h4>Proactive</h4>

<h4>Parent-led</h4>

<h3>Principles That Don't Bend</h3>We believe protecting kids online should never come at the expense of privacy, parental rights, or constitutional freedoms. As a nonpartisan, independent, and parent-led coalition, we are committed to honest research, accountability, and proactive advocacy that puts families—not government or technology companies—at the center of every solution.

Pillars

Not every child online safety bill is the same—but many follow the same legislative templates. These are the most common categories of bills moving through state legislatures today. Explore each issue to understand how these policies work, what they require, and the tradeoffs they create for families, privacy, and the future of the internet.

<h2>The Most Common Age Verification Blueprints.</h2>

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<h1>Our Team</h1>

Protecting Kids Online is building a national coalition of organizations, parent groups, policy experts, advocates, and community leaders committed to advancing real child safety solutions that respect privacy, parental rights, and constitutional freedoms.No single organization can stop bad policy alone. Lasting change happens when diverse voices work together around shared principles.Whether you're a nonprofit, advocacy organization, grassroots movement, professional association, faith community, or parent-led group, we'd love to explore how we can work together. Why Partner With Us?Coalition partners receive opportunities to:<ul><li>Collaborate on advocacy campaigns and legislative efforts</li><li>Share educational resources and research</li><li>Participate in coalition strategy calls and briefings</li><li>Cross-promote initiatives and events</li><li>Sign coalition letters and public statements</li><li>Amplify parent voices through coordinated action</li><li>Build relationships with organizations working toward the same goal</li></ul>Partnerships are collaborative—not transactional. Every organization brings unique expertise, perspectives, and audiences to strengthen the movement.Who We're Looking ForWe welcome organizations that believe:<ul><li>Parents should remain the primary decision-makers for their children.</li><li>Children's privacy should never be traded for digital surveillance.</li><li>Technology companies should be held accountable without expanding unnecessary data collection.</li><li>Public policy should be transparent, evidence-based, and respectful of constitutional rights.</li><li>Protecting children and protecting civil liberties can—and should—go hand in hand.</li></ul>Organizations of all sizes are encouraged to apply.Let's Build Something BiggerThe challenges facing children online are too important for any one organization to tackle alone. By working together, we can educate families, influence policy, and advocate for solutions that protect children while preserving the freedoms and privacy every family deserves.Interested in becoming a coalition partner? Complete this form, and a member of our team will be in touch to learn more about your organization and explore opportunities to collaborate.

<h2>Protect Kids Without Sacrificing Privacy.</h2>

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<h2>Social Media Bans</h2>Although introduced under different names in different states, many social media ban bills follow the same legislative playbook. Once you recognize the pattern, it becomes easier to evaluate whether a proposal addresses harmful platform design—or simply expands the infrastructure needed to verify and monitor users.

BB4: Social Media Bans

<h1>Blog &amp; News</h1>

<h1>Events</h1>

Age verification laws aren't just about proving your age. They're about expanding identity checks, increasing data collection, and normalizing a digital ID infrastructure that affects every American.Children deserve real online protections—but those protections should strengthen families, preserve privacy, and keep parents in the driver's seat. We oppose policies that require Americans to surrender more personal information in the name of child safety.Join Protecting Kids Online to help defend children's privacy, protect parental authority, and push for solutions that keep kids safe without creating a surveillance-first internet.

<h2>Child Safety Without Surveillance</h2>

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<h2>Meet the Team</h2>

<h6>Founder &amp; Executive Director</h6>

<h4>Julie Barrett</h4>

<h6>Strategic Advisor</h6>

<h4>Brad Klippert</h4>

<h6>Communications Director</h6>

<h4>Jennifer Barber</h4>

People With Bios

<h2>App Store Accountability Act (ASAA)</h2>Requires age verification infrastructure that expands data collection for everyone while creating new privacy and security risks.

BB2: ASAA

When the personal becomes political.

<h2>A Note from Our Founder, Julie.</h2>

In 2021, our family experienced a crisis that exposed something I hadn't known existed: Washington State laws that gave the government authority to override parental decisions about our own child's care. What I encountered was a system designed to circumvent parental rights in the name of protecting children— and it changed the course of my life. Shortly after, I met a legislator who helped me understand how those laws were made and who had passed them. I started reading legislation. Then I started showing up to testify. I couldn't stop. I testified on all kinds of bills, but I was most passionate about legislation affecting parents and children; the laws that quietly strip families of authority while claiming to protect them. When we moved to Florida in 2023, I kept going. The issues were everywhere. In 2025, I started hearing about the App Store Accountability Act. Many of the parent organizations I was connected to were supporting it. When I read the bill myself, I realized something was wrong. This bill didn't empower parents or protect children. It handed children's data to corporations and created a government identity verification system dressed up as child safety.I began testifying against it in state after state. And the more I showed up, the more I realized: there was no organized parent coalition asking the same questions I was. The bills were moving fast. The other side was coordinated and well-funded. And parents — real parents who had actually read the legislation — were almost never in the room.That's why I built Protecting Kids Online. Not because someone asked me to. Because someone had to. ​— Julie Barrett, Founder &amp; Executive Director

Our History

<h2>Explaining Social Media Bans</h2>Every few months, a new bill arrives promising to keep kids off social media until they're old enough to handle it. Different sponsor, different state, different age cutoff: Florida's HB 3, Mississippi's HB 1126, Utah's Social Media Regulation Act, Texas's HB 18. Read past the press release, and they all build the same thing.At the core of every one of these bills is the same five-part structure: an identity gate, a categorical restriction by age, an ongoing monitoring system, a data carve-out for the vendors who run it, and a definition of "social media platform" broad enough to cover almost anything with a comment section. The names change, but the architecture does not.The identity gateBefore any of these bills can restrict who holds an account, they first have to establish how old every user is. That requirement takes different forms (government ID upload, biometric age estimation, a parent's notarized consent), but the function is identical. You cannot enforce an age-based rule without first collecting the age of every user, not just the ones the rule targets.Some versions frame this as "age verification." Others frame it as "age assurance" or a "commercially reasonable" standard. The softer language doesn't change what gets built. A platform that can't prove it knows a user's age carries the liability, so the identity infrastructure gets built for the adult population too, as the only way to sort out who's exempt.The categorical restriction.Once the gate exists, the bill uses it. No accounts under 14. Parental consent required at 15 and 16. A hard cutoff at 18 absent a parent's sign-off. This is the part that gets quoted in the press release, and it's the part that's easiest to support; nobody wants an eleven-year-old alone in an algorithmic feed at midnight.But the restriction only exists downstream of the gate. Support the age cutoff, and you've already accepted the identity infrastructure required to enforce it against everyone, adult users included.The monitoring problem.This is where these bills go further than most people realize. Beyond the one-time gate, the compliance architecture requires ongoing verification: session-level age re-checks, parental dashboards showing a minor's activity and contacts, algorithmic curfews that cut access at set hours, and consent records that have to be maintained and produced on demand.A system built to track when a minor logs on, who they talk to, and what hours they're active is a surveillance mechanism regardless of the intention behind it. None of these bills specify how long that activity data is retained, who else can request it, or what happens to a minor's account and connection history once they age into adulthood and the monitoring is supposed to stop.The vendor exemption.Every one of these bills contains data minimization language: no selling verification data, limited retention, encryption requirements. Read the next clause and the protections apply only to the platform itself, not to the third-party age verification vendor the bill explicitly permits the platform to hire. The company actually holding the ID scan or the biometric estimate operates under its own privacy policy, not the bill's. Several versions say nothing about how long a vendor can retain a rejected verification attempt, or whether that data can be resold, aggregated, or repurposed for something other than age assurance.The elastic definition."Social media platform" gets defined broadly enough in most of these bills to sweep in far more than the Instagram-and-TikTok target the sponsor described at the press conference. A platform is often defined by the presence of user-generated content and an algorithmic feed, which catches discussion forums, multiplayer games with chat, and even some educational platforms alongside the apps the bill is nominally aimed at. News and sports sites get a carve-out; almost nothing else does.That breadth isn't incidental. A narrow definition would require narrow infrastructure. A broad one requires the same identity and monitoring architecture to be built for every interactive platform a minor might touch.What real protection would look like.A bill built to keep kids safer on social media would target the specific design choices driving harm: autoplay, infinite scroll, engagement-optimized notifications, algorithmic amplification of self-harm content without requiring an identity and behavioral-tracking system for every user, adult and minor, to get there. It would hold a platform accountable when a specific feature caused documented harm to a specific child. It would not require a permanent age-verified account architecture on every user as the price of restricting the ten million who are minors.None of the bills built on this template do that. They deliver the identity infrastructure first and the child-safety outcome as a byproduct, if at all.What parents can do today.You don't need this architecture to limit your child's social media use right now. Device-level screen time controls, app-level parental supervision tools, and a running conversation about what your child sees online are available today, with no new data collection on your family required. An engaged parent, not a government age-verification mandate, is still the most effective safeguard that exists. No compliance template, federal or state, replaces that.

Explaining Social Media Bans.

As parents, we are navigating a world that changes faster than ever. New platforms, new technologies, and new challenges can feel overwhelming, but the most important tool we have has not changed.

<h2>Our Mission</h2>

<h1>The most powerful protection a child has is an engaged parent.</h1><img src="https://run.imgix.net/67fcc314-d86b-40fb-9d05-862cc295c193/48097d33-a7f2-4d01-a829-36b4e2aa1470/48097d33-a7f2-4d01-a829-36b4e2aa1470.jpg?ixlib=js-3.8.0&amp;bri=0&amp;con=0&amp;sat=0&amp;high=0&amp;shad=0&amp;usm=0&amp;rect=0%2C0%2C6720%2C4480&amp;w=1500" alt="" caption="" align="left" alignwidth="40" tiltdirection="left" variant="framed"><h4>We're a national, nonpartisan coalition fighting to keep kids safe online.</h4>Protecting Kids Online is a national coalition of parents, families, concerned citizens, and advocacy organizations united by a single conviction: children deserve to be genuinely protected online, not surveilled in the name of safety.We are fighting to protect children's privacy and parental rights from government digital ID mandates and data farming legislation that exploits the language of child safety to build surveillance infrastructure. And we are equipping parents with the knowledge and tools to protect their children right now — because real child safety starts at home, not in a government database.While parents are at the center of this fight, the constitutional implications extend to every American. Age verification mandates require identity submission from all users, not just families, making this a civil liberties issue as much as a parental rights issue. The more difficult question is not whether children should be protected (of course they should) but whether a particular policy represents a necessary, constitutional, and appropriately limited exercise of government authority. That is the question Protecting Kids Online exists to ask and answer.We are not affiliated with any political party, corporation, or think tank. We read the bills. We show up.

Our Mission

Not every bill that promises to protect children actually does. Below are the proposals we're monitoring because we believe they expand surveillance, weaken privacy, or shift responsibility away from parents while doing little to address the real risks facing kids online.

<h2>Bad Bills We're Tracking</h2>

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Protecting Kids Online is a national, nonpartisan, parent-led coalition advocating for children's online safety. We advance policies that put parents—not government databases, digital identity systems, or corporate surveillance—at the center of every solution. We believe the strongest firewall protecting a child has always been an engaged parent. We champion solutions that empower families without sacrificing the rights of every American.

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<h2>Why Is the Most Conservative Think Tank Pushing for More Government?</h2><h3>This is a question every conservative should be asking.</h3>This is a dramatic expansion of government power over digital life.The Heritage Foundation argues that this is necessary to protect children. But the infrastructure they propose is identical to the Digital ID systems used in Europe, Australia, and Canada — systems conservatives have long opposed.If the most conservative think tank in America is now advocating for a national identity‑verification regime, we should be asking why.<h3>TLDR: Age Verification Laws Fall Short.</h3>Supporters of age‑verification laws rely on five core arguments: child protection, privacy‑preserving technology, third‑party verifiers, constitutional safety, and the promise of an “American‑style” system. But each of these claims collapses under scrutiny.Age verification does not reduce exposure. It requires identity. It centralizes data. It expands government power. And it lays the groundwork for a Digital ID system that can be expanded far beyond pornography.This debate is not about protecting children. It is about who controls identity, access, and speech in the digital age.

Yet their AV <a href="https://www.heritage.org/big-tech/report/age-verification-what-it-why-its-necessary-and-how-achieve-it" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">proposal</a> calls for:

<h4>The Heritage Foundation has historically championed limited government, individual liberty, and skepticism of centralized power.</h4>

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Our mission is to protect children and defend parental rights by equipping families and citizens with the tools to keep kids safe online. We oppose government surveillance disguised as child safety legislation and build an informed, independent coalition that changes policy and culture.

We're glad you're here. Have questions or want to get involved? Fill out the form below, and we'll be in touch soon. By submitting this form, you agree that we may contact you by email or text regarding your inquiry.You may also choose to email us directly at info@protectingkids.online

<h2>Contact Us</h2>

<h2>AI Chatbot Compliance</h2>Many AI chatbot bills promise to protect children from emerging technologies. Yet beneath the headlines, they often require the same identity checks, monitoring systems, and data infrastructure regardless of the specific platform or risk they're intended to address.

BB1: AI and Chat Bots

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<h2>Catch the latest from our Founder, Julie</h2>

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Protecting Kids Online monitors and fights bills that claim to protect kids but create harm instead. We oppose:

<h2>Legislation We Oppose</h2>

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Legislation We Oppose

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<h2>Online safety bills should protect kids—but many don’t.</h2>

<h5>What Are Age Verification (AV) laws?</h5>

<h5>Why Age Verification Laws Fail — Every Time.</h5>

<h5>Learn More About The Legislation We Oppose.</h5>

<h5>Read The Latest News From our Founder.</h5>

Our Work

Watch our Founder, Julie, testify before lawmakers about the child safety bills we're tracking.

<h2>Testimony from the 2026 Legislative Session.</h2>

<h4>Let parents parent.</h4>Watch Julie Barrett testify about the App Store Accountability Act.

<h4>The child safety bill that Big Tech wrote.</h4>Julie testifies in Wisconsin about age verification bills.

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<h2>What's the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA)?</h2>KOSA sounds like a bill that forces platforms to protect children. It does not.At its core, the bill requires platforms to exercise “reasonable care” in how they design their products. That means documenting their process—internal reviews, design checklists, committee sign-offs. It does not require them to prevent harm. A platform that completes the paperwork is legally protected even if a child is still harmed by the result. The duty runs to the process, not to your child’s safety. The compliance problem.To meet the bill’s transparency rules, platforms must build an entirely new dataset on minor users: behavioral metrics, time-on-platform data, algorithm records, and minor user counts. All of it goes to a third-party auditor with access to “all network, systems, and assets relevant to the audit.”The bill requires:<ul><li>No encryption for this data</li><li>No breach notification</li><li>No retention limits</li><li>No standards for who qualifies as an auditor</li></ul>More data collection on children is not protection. It is exposure.The age-verification backdoor.KOSA also creates the practical equivalent of an age-verification mandate without writing one. Platforms must report on users they “know” are minors, with “knowledge” defined as something “fairly implied” by circumstances. The FTC decides later what platforms should have known. Platforms that cannot prove they know their minor users face audits and enforcement. Age-detection systems get built because not having them becomes legally risky.What real protection would look like.A bill truly designed to protect children would hold platforms accountable for outcomes, not paperwork. When a platform’s design contributes to documented harm to a specific child, there should be a real remedy. KOSA does not deliver that. It delivers a compliance system that mandates new data collection on kids, opens platforms to unvetted private auditors, and gives companies a legal exit once the forms are filled out. What parents can do today.You do not need to wait for Congress. Device-level controls, screen-time limits, supervised access, and direct conversations about what your child sees online are available right now. The most powerful child-safety tool ever built is an engaged parent. No federal compliance mandate replaces that.If Congress acts, the mechanism must match the goal. KOSA does not.

What is KOSA?

<h2>Age Verification Laws</h2>

Age verification protects children from harmful content.

Age verification can be done without collecting personal data.

Third‑party verifiers solve the privacy problem.

The Supreme Court upheld Texas’ age‑verification law.

America should build a device‑level age verification system.

AV Bill Accordion

<h2>What's the App Store Accountability Act (ASAA)?</h2>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.​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. 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.

What is ASAA?

News Post

<h2>Headline Text Here</h2>

<h2>Introduction to Age Verification (AV) Bills</h2>Across the country, lawmakers are advancing age‑verification (AV) bills with the stated goal of protecting children online. These proposals are often framed as simple, common‑sense measures: keep minors away from explicit content, empower parents, and hold platforms accountable. On the surface, it sounds straightforward. But the reality is far more complex. To verify someone’s age online, a system must first verify who that person is. That means collecting, scanning, or matching identity‑linked information, whether through a driver’s license, a selfie, a phone number, a credit card, or a biometric scan. In practice, age verification is not a digital “lock on the liquor cabinet.” It is the creation of an identity checkpoint for everyday internet use.What’s emerging is not just a child‑safety tool, but the early architecture of a Digital ID system in the United States. Major think tanks, advocacy groups, and technology vendors now openly describe AV as a gateway to device‑level identity signals, interoperable verification across apps and browsers, and government‑mandated standards for how platforms confirm who is an adult and who is a minor. For the average person, this means that accessing websites, apps, or online services could increasingly require proving your identity to a third‑party verifier or to your device itself. The debate may be framed around protecting children, but the long‑term consequence is the normalization of identity‑gated access to the internet, an expansion of data collection, surveillance potential, and government authority that reaches far beyond the issue of online safety.

AV Bills

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KOSA sounds like a bill that forces platforms to protect children. It does not. At its core, the bill requires platforms to exercise “reasonable care” in how they design their products. That means documenting their process—internal reviews, design checklists, committee sign-offs. It does not require them to prevent harm. A platform that completes the paperwork is legally protected even if a child is still harmed by the result. The duty runs to the process, not to your child’s safety.

Kids Online Safety Act | Protecting Kids Online

Kids Online Safety Act

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Not every bill introduced in the name of child safety delivers on that promise. Below are the #BadBills we're actively tracking that we believe expand surveillance, weaken privacy, or miss the root causes of the harms children face online.

Bad Bills | Protecting Kids Online

Bad Bills

You don't need this architecture to limit your child's social media use right now. Device-level screen time controls, app-level parental supervision tools, and a running conversation about what your child sees online are available today, with no new data collection on your family required. An engaged parent, not a government age-verification mandate, is still the most effective safeguard that exists. No compliance template, federal or state, replaces that.

Social Media Bans | Protecting Kids Online

Social Media Bans

Breaking down age verification policies: Why Age‑Verification Mandates lead to Digital ID systems, data risks, and expanded government power.

Issues | Protecting Kids Online

Issues

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Our mission is to protect children and defend parental rights by equipping families and citizens with the tools to keep kids safe online. We oppose government surveillance disguised as child safety legislation and seek to build an informed, independent parent-led coalition to #ProtectKidsOnline.

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Our mission is to protect children and defend parental rights by equipping families and citizens with the tools to keep kids safe online. We oppose government surveillance disguised as child safety legislation and seek to build an informed, independent parent-led coalition to #ProtectKidsOnline.

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You don't need this architecture to protect your child from an AI chatbot right now. Device-level parental controls, app restrictions, and direct conversation about what your child is doing online are available today, with no new data collection on your family required. An engaged parent is still the most effective safeguard that exists. No compliance template, federal or state, replaces that.

AI Chatbot Compliance | Protecting Kids Online

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As parents, we are navigating a world that changes faster than ever. New platforms, new technologies, and new challenges can feel overwhelming, but the most important tool we have has not changed.

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Children deserve real online protections—but those protections should strengthen families, preserve privacy, and keep parents in the driver's seat. We oppose policies that require Americans to surrender more personal information in the name of child safety.

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Supporters say the App Store Accountability Act protects children. We believe the facts tell a different story.

App Store Accountability Act | Protecting Kids Online

App Store Accountability Act

When the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued its stay order on June 4, proponents of the App Store Accountability Act called it a major victory. This was an early victory lap for a case where the constitutional questions are far from resolved. The stay was a preliminary signal, not a final ruling. The fight was far from over.Ten days later, that assessment was confirmed. On June 10, both sets of challengers, the Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT) and the Computer &amp; Communications Industry Association (CCIA), <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/justices-urged-to-stop-texas-from-enforcing-age-verification-and-parental-consent-law-on-apps/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">filed </a>emergency applications asking the Supreme Court to vacate the Fifth Circuit’s stay and restore the district court’s injunction blocking SB 2420 from taking effect. Justice Samuel Alito, who handles emergency applications from the Fifth Circuit, called for Texas to respond by June 22.This case is now on the Supreme Court’s interim docket. The constitutional fight over the Texas App Store Accountability Act has reached the highest court in the country before the Fifth Circuit has even ruled on the merits. Where We Left Off In my last <a href="https://conservativeladiesofamerica.substack.com/p/child-safety-or-surveillance-state" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">article </a>about this case, I walked through what the Fifth Circuit’s June 4 stay order actually said versus how it was being characterized. The short version: the panel found Texas had made a “strong showing” it was likely to succeed on appeal, which is a different and lower standard than actually ruling the law constitutional.The most significant part of that order was the legal framework the panel used to get there. Rather than applying strict scrutiny, which is the most demanding First Amendment standard, the panel reached for the commercial speech doctrine under Central Hudson Gas &amp; Electric Corp. v. Public Service Commission of New York. The panel’s argument was that app store transactions are commercial in nature, even when no money changes hands, because “the ‘payment’ for apps that are purportedly ‘free’ is access to user data and private information.”That reframing is very significant. Commercial speech receives less First Amendment protection than other speech. By classifying app store activity as commercial speech, the panel dropped the constitutional standard from strict scrutiny to intermediate scrutiny, which is a far easier bar for Texas to clear.I noted at the time that this reasoning was contestable, that it could be expanded far beyond app stores, and that the challengers would attack it hard. They have. What the Challengers Are Arguing Both applications make overlapping but distinct arguments. Together they present the most comprehensive First Amendment challenge to app store legislation that any court has seen. On the commercial speech framing: The SEAT application goes directly at the Fifth Circuit’s central holding. The challengers argue that the panel’s reasoning “would render virtually the entire internet — not to mention the distribution of every book, newspaper, magazine, movie, or record album — ‘commercial speech’ the government could more readily ban, restrict, edit, or compel. That is clearly wrong.” The CCIA application makes the same point with a different emphasis, citing settled Supreme Court precedent that “speech does not lose its First Amendment protection . . . even though it is carried in a form that is ‘sold’ for profit, and even though it may involve a solicitation to purchase or otherwise pay or contribute money.” Under the Fifth Circuit’s view, the CCIA argues, “states could invoke the commercial-speech doctrine to impose sweeping limits on movie theaters, art galleries, plays, bookstores, and newspapers — all of which offer speech in exchange for payment.” The brick-and-mortar analogy in the CCIA application is worth sitting with. Imagine, the challengers write, “a state law that required every business, every bookstore, movie theater, video rental store, record shop, symphony hall, arcade, newsstand, and so on, to verify the age of every patron at the door and then required parental consent before those under 18 could enter. Once inside, the parent would have to separately provide consent for every item the minor wished to buy, be it a book by Ernest Hemingway or J.K. Rowling, a Taylor Swift album, or a subscription to National Geographic. That law would be unconstitutional.” No brick-and-mortar analog to SB 2420, the CCIA argues, “is conceivable — let alone would survive constitutional scrutiny.” On the stated purpose of the law: This is where the applications take a sharp turn that should concern every state legislature that has passed or is considering similar legislation. Both challengers argue that Texas’s own stated purpose for SB 2420 defeats the law’s constitutional defense. The SEAT application quotes directly from Attorney General Paxton’s press release noting that “officials responsible for drafting, enforcing, and now defending SB 2420 have made no secret that the law exists ‘to stop’ Texas youth ‘from accessing harmful or inappropriate content.'” The CCIA application goes further, noting that “Texas conceded in the District Court that the Act’s purpose was to protect children from what the State views as harmful content, including speech that is fully protected as to minors.” Both applications then cite Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, a 2011 Supreme Court decision, for the proposition that the government has no “free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed,” and that speech “cannot be suppressed solely to protect the young from ideas or images that a legislative body thinks unsuitable for them.” Protecting children from “harmful or inappropriate content”, when that content is constitutionally protected, is not, the challengers argue, “a valid government interest, much less a compelling one.” On the parental rights framing: This point deserves particular attention because parental rights is the primary political argument SB 2420 proponents have used, and it is being turned directly against the law.The CCIA application quotes Brown again: “minors ‘are entitled to a significant measure of First Amendment protection’ and that States lack ‘power to prevent children from hearing or saying anything without their parents’ prior consent.’ ‘Such laws do not enforce parental authority over children’s speech . . . they impose governmental authority, subject only to a parental veto,’ and so violate the First Amendment.” The SEAT application echoes this directly, arguing that SB 2420 “imposes ‘what the State thinks parents ought to want'” rather than empowering parents to decide for themselves. One of the individual SEAT plaintiffs, a minor identified as M.F., has a mother who “believes government-ordered surveillance hampers her children’s development and interferes with her discretion.” Under SB 2420, her preference is irrelevant. The state has decided what parental oversight looks like, and every family must conform to it. This is not a parental rights bill; it is a government mandate dressed in parental rights language. On the procedural posture: The CCIA application makes a pointed observation about how the Fifth Circuit handled the stay motion: the panel granted it “with only Respondent and its amici having filed merits briefing.” The challengers had not yet submitted their merits brief when the panel acted. The CCIA describes this as a “hasty and erroneous order” that “has upset the status quo by allowing the Act to be enforced for the first time, exposing app stores and millions of app developers to potential liability.” It is also worth noting what both applications flag about the panel itself: “Judge Haynes concurred only in the sentence of the order granting the stay.” She signed onto the outcome but not the legal reasoning. The commercial speech framework the panel used to justify the stay does not have the full panel’s endorsement. The Infrastructure Question Nobody Is Asking We have been tracking what we call the infrastructure thesis: the idea that the legal justification for a given surveillance or identity verification mandate is variable, but the infrastructure it builds is permanent. The mechanism changes. The database doesn’t.The Fifth Circuit’s commercial speech framing is the newest version of this pattern.If app store transactions are commercial speech subject to reduced First Amendment protection because users exchange data for access, the same logic is available at the operating system level, where device activation involves a commercial transaction. It is available at the browser level, where terms of service govern access. It is available at any digital gateway where a commercial relationship can be identified. The SEAT challengers named this risk explicitly, arguing that the Fifth Circuit’s reasoning “would render virtually the entire internet” subject to the government’s more readily available tools to “ban, restrict, edit, or compel.” That is not hyperbole. It is a precise description of where commercial speech framing leads if left unchecked. The Fifth Circuit’s own footnote 7 in the June 4 order made this even more explicit, floating, without deciding, that SB 2420 may not regulate speech at all, only “commercial conduct with an incidental relationship to speech.” If a future court adopts that reasoning fully, the First Amendment analysis disappears entirely, and age verification mandates at every layer of the digital ecosystem become regulations of commerce rather than restrictions on speech. This is exactly the mission creep that age verification and digital identity opponents have been warning about. The infrastructure is the constant; the legal theory is just the latest variable. What Happens Next SCOTUS has denied the emergency applications from SEAT and CCIA to block Texas SB&nbsp;2420, allowing the law to take effect while litigation continues in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. This is not a ruling on the constitutionality of the law; it is only a denial to block the law during the appeals process. The next court hearing is August 13, 2026, in the Fifth Circuit. Be sure to check back for updates and follow us on social media for the latest breaking news!

When the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued its stay order on June 4, proponents of the App Store Accountability Act called it a major victory. This was an early victory lap for a case where the constitutional questions are far from resolved. The stay was a preliminary signal, not a final ruling. The fight was far from over.

Texas App Store Accountability Act Reaches the Supreme Court | Protecting Kids Online

When the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued its stay order on June 4, proponents of the App Store Accountability Act called it a major victory. This was an early victory lap for a case where the constitutional questions are far from resolved. The stay was a preliminary signal, not a final ruling. The fight was far from over. Ten days later, that assessment was confirmed.

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<h4>Texas App Store Accountability Act Reaches the Supreme Court.</h4>

Every few months, a new bill arrives promising to keep kids off social media until they're old enough to handle it. Different sponsor, different state, different age cutoff: Florida's HB 3, Mississippi's HB 1126, Utah's Social Media Regulation Act, Texas's HB 18. Read past the press release, and they all build the same thing.At the core of every one of these bills is the same five-part structure: an identity gate, a categorical restriction by age, an ongoing monitoring system, a data carve-out for the vendors who run it, and a definition of "social media platform" broad enough to cover almost anything with a comment section. The names change, but the architecture does not.The identity gate.Before any of these bills can restrict who holds an account, they first have to establish how old every user is. That requirement takes different forms (government ID upload, biometric age estimation, a parent's notarized consent), but the function is identical. You cannot enforce an age-based rule without first collecting the age of every user, not just the ones the rule targets.Some versions frame this as "age verification." Others frame it as "age assurance" or a "commercially reasonable" standard. The softer language doesn't change what gets built. A platform that can't prove it knows a user's age carries the liability, so the identity infrastructure gets built for the adult population too, as the only way to sort out who's exempt.The categorical restriction.Once the gate exists, the bill uses it. No accounts under 14. Parental consent required at 15 and 16. A hard cutoff at 18 absent a parent's sign-off. This is the part that gets quoted in the press release, and it's the part that's easiest to support; nobody wants an eleven-year-old alone in an algorithmic feed at midnight.But the restriction only exists downstream of the gate. Support the age cutoff, and you've already accepted the identity infrastructure required to enforce it against everyone, adult users included.The monitoring problem.This is where these bills go further than most people realize. Beyond the one-time gate, the compliance architecture requires ongoing verification: session-level age re-checks, parental dashboards showing a minor's activity and contacts, algorithmic curfews that cut access at set hours, and consent records that have to be maintained and produced on demand.A system built to track when a minor logs on, who they talk to, and what hours they're active is a surveillance mechanism regardless of the intention behind it. None of these bills specify how long that activity data is retained, who else can request it, or what happens to a minor's account and connection history once they age into adulthood and the monitoring is supposed to stop.The vendor exemption.Every one of these bills contains data minimization language: no selling verification data, limited retention, encryption requirements. Read the next clause and the protections apply only to the platform itself, not to the third-party age verification vendor the bill explicitly permits the platform to hire. The company actually holding the ID scan or the biometric estimate operates under its own privacy policy, not the bill's. Several versions say nothing about how long a vendor can retain a rejected verification attempt, or whether that data can be resold, aggregated, or repurposed for something other than age assurance.The elastic definition."Social media platform" gets defined broadly enough in most of these bills to sweep in far more than the Instagram-and-TikTok target the sponsor described at the press conference. A platform is often defined by the presence of user-generated content and an algorithmic feed, which catches discussion forums, multiplayer games with chat, and even some educational platforms alongside the apps the bill is nominally aimed at. News and sports sites get a carve-out; almost nothing else does.That breadth isn't incidental. A narrow definition would require narrow infrastructure. A broad one requires the same identity and monitoring architecture to be built for every interactive platform a minor might touch.What real protection would look like.A bill built to keep kids safer on social media would target the specific design choices driving harm; autoplay, infinite scroll, engagement-optimized notifications, algorithmic amplification of self-harm content without requiring an identity and behavioral-tracking system for every user, adult and minor, to get there. It would hold a platform accountable when a specific feature caused documented harm to a specific child. It would not require a permanent age-verified account architecture on every user as the price of restricting the ten million who are minors.None of the bills built on this template do that. They deliver the identity infrastructure first and the child-safety outcome as a byproduct, if at all.What parents can do today.You don't need this architecture to limit your child's social media use right now. Device-level screen time controls, app-level parental supervision tools, and a running conversation about what your child sees online are available today, with no new data collection on your family required. An engaged parent, not a government age-verification mandate, is still the most effective safeguard that exists. No compliance template, federal or state, replaces that.

Social media bans promise to protect children by restricting access based on age. In practice, they rely on age verification, expand data collection, and shift responsibility away from parents without addressing the underlying harms online.

<h2>Social Media Bans</h2>

Bills requiring identity verification don't just affect minors; they surveil every American. The data infrastructure these bills create serves platforms and government agencies far more than it serves families.

Bills requiring identity verification don't just affect minors, they surveil every American. The data infrastructure these bills create serves platforms and government agencies far more than it serves families.

Write a short blurb about an issue your campaign is highlighting. Try to keep the text a similar size between the various issue blurbs.

<h2>Age Verification for All Adults</h2>

Parents and legislators keep hearing the same reassurance: age verification technology can confirm someone is over 18 without ever revealing who they are. Age, not identity. That's the pitch behind nearly every state and federal age-verification proposal moving through statehouses right now. That reassurance doesn't come from a fringe source. It comes from the Age Verification Providers Association (AVPA), the global trade body representing the companies that build this technology. And in a recent <a href="https://avpassociation.com/thought-leadership/rhetorically-conflating-age-and-identity-checks-is-putting-a-sign-above-the-door-you-want-to-close/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">piece </a>on their own site, AVPA made an argument worth reading closely, because buried inside their own defense of the industry is an admission that undercuts the pitch itself. What AVPA Actually Argues AVPA's piece takes aim at a specific line of criticism: the argument that age verification is really just identity verification wearing a different label. Their concern isn't that this criticism is merely wrong; it's strategic. They warn that if critics keep repeating the "age checks are identity checks" framing, the public will eventually assume identity disclosure is already baked into every age-verification system, whether or not that's true. That assumption, they argue, would make it easier for platforms to justify collecting real identity data down the road, since the public will already believe that's the status quo. To make their case that age and identity really are separable, AVPA points to a range of technologies: biometric age estimation, bank-derived age signals, and age attributes pulled from digital identity wallets. Each is designed, they say, to confirm a user meets an age threshold without disclosing who that user actually is. It's a coherent argument, and it deserves a fair hearing before any critique. The industry has, in fact, invested real effort into building systems that minimize what gets shared with the website or app asking "how old are you?" That much is true. The Sentence That Undoes the Argument One sentence in AVPA's own piece gives away more than they intend. Describing how digital wallet systems work, they note that even when an authoritative identity document is used to originally establish someone's age, the wallet itself only needs to disclose a data-minimized age attribute afterward. An identity document (a driver's license, a passport, some government-issued credential) is still used to establish the person's age in the first place. The "privacy-preserving" part only kicks in after&nbsp;that. The platform asking "are you over 18?" may never see a name or a document number. But somewhere upstream, a system already verified exactly who that person is in order to issue the credential that now answers "yes" on their behalf.That's not eliminating the identity check; it's just relocating it, moving it earlier in the pipeline, to a point where it's harder to see, harder to scrutinize, and easier to defend as "just age verification." What "Upstream" Looks Like in Practice This isn't a hypothetical. The architecture AVPA is describing maps onto a real, existing standard: ISO 18013-5 and its successor 18013-7, the technical specifications underlying the mobile driver's license (mDL). This is the same standard the federal government has already built into law for one use case (TSA's mDL acceptance rule at airport security) developed through an ISO working group that includes both the Department of Homeland Security and commercial vendors building state-level mDL systems.In other words, the infrastructure connecting an "age, not identity" credential back to a fully verified government identity already exists. It isn't a slippery-slope prediction. It's the plumbing the technology runs on today, for a purpose Congress has already approved in at least one context. Extending it to age verification for social media, app stores, or AI chatbots doesn't require inventing anything new; the rails are already there, waiting for the next justification to run through them. Privacy-Preserving Doesn't Mean Breach-Proof Even setting aside where the identity check happens, "designed for privacy" is a design goal, not a guarantee. In March 2026, Spain's data protection authority, the AEPD, fined the age-verification vendor Yoti €950,000 for GDPR violations connected to how it handled age-verification data. Yoti is not some obscure outlier; it's one of the more prominent vendors in exactly the space AVPA represents. The fine matters here for a narrow reason: it's a real-world instance of a "privacy-preserving" system failing at the privacy part, from an actual regulator, not a theoretical concern raised by skeptics. The architecture can be built with the best privacy intentions in the world and still fail once it's deployed at scale, handling real data, under real commercial pressure. What to Watch For AVPA's own piece worries that if the public stops believing the distinction between age and identity, the outcome will be worse privacy protections, not better ones. That's a fair concern, framed honestly, and it's worth turning back on the industry itself. The distinction is worth preserving. But it can only be preserved by looking at the actual architecture underneath a system, not by accepting the marketing language at face value.The next time a bill or a vendor promises "age, not identity," the useful question isn't whether the platform sees your name. It's where the age attribute originally came from, who verified it, and what record that verification created upstream. That's the part the reassurance leaves out and it's the part parents and legislators deserve a straight answer to before any of these systems become law, not after.

Parents and legislators keep hearing the same reassurance: age verification technology can confirm someone is over 18 without ever revealing who they are. Age, not identity. That's the pitch behind nearly every state and federal age-verification proposal moving through statehouses right now.

The Age Verification Industry Just Told On Itself | Protecting Kids Online

Parents and legislators keep hearing the same reassurance: age verification technology can confirm someone is over 18 without ever revealing who they are. Age, not identity. That's the pitch behind nearly every state and federal age-verification proposal moving through statehouses right now.

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