The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

Who Wants Age Checks and Why

• Governments and politicians framed as wanting more control, citing terrorism, child safety, and “protect the kids” narratives.
• Some see this as aligned with social-conservative agendas (e.g., outlawing porn, enforcing specific sexual morality).
• Big tech, especially Meta, is said to support it: to gain more data (including biometrics), shift liability, and raise barriers to new competitors.
• Some parents and a few politicians/tech leaders are described as genuinely seeking tools to protect children from addictive or harmful content.

Surveillance, Control, and Regulatory Capture

• Many view the bill as a step toward universal digital ID, mass surveillance, and easier censorship, with “kids” as political cover.
• Fears include: linkage of browsing to government ID, blackmail of officials, future denial of jobs/loans, and repression of disfavored groups.
• Several comments frame this as classic regulatory capture: big tech shaping inevitable regulation to entrench itself.

Child Protection vs. Parental Responsibility

• Strong frustration that tech products are intentionally addictive and difficult for non‑technical parents to supervise.
• Others argue this is fundamentally a parenting and inequality problem (time, money, attention), not a technical one; state power shouldn’t replace parenting.

Effectiveness and Risks

• Skeptics say porn and social media will remain accessible via workarounds, foreign sites, or shared devices.
• Concern that age-gated “kid spaces” may actually help predators find and target minors, while also eroding anonymity for everyone.
• Some argue harms from social media are real (addiction, body image, extremism), others note research is mixed and causality unclear.

Scope and Legal Issues

• Debate over how broad “covered platforms” are: ad-funded, recommendation-driven sites vs. narrower porn/social-media targets.
• Some say the EFF title (“to get online”) overstates scope; others respond that for normal users “online” effectively means big platforms.
• Comparisons to alcohol/nicotine age checks appear, but countered by First Amendment concerns and the permanence/centralization of digital records.

Proposed Alternatives

• OS/device-level age flags without ID (e.g., California approach).
• Stronger, usable parental controls and manual moderation at smaller scale.
• Privacy-preserving age proofs (zero-knowledge) or separate “kid internet” ideas.
• Non-technical fixes: banning ads to children, limiting algorithmic feeds, improving social supports for parents.