Would you trust Washington politicians like Josh Hawley or Elizabeth Warren to be the first ones to decide what your kids can see and do online?
The answer is likely “no.”
Yet that is what could happen if online age-verification efforts continue to gain momentum in the U.S. These controls make the government the default authority in children’s online lives, push parents into a secondary role, and create a false sense of safety. Parents are better off using private tools to make individual decisions than delegating responsibility to the government.
Countries like Australia and the UK have already implemented these laws, and in the US, states like Florida and Mississippi have their own versions. California’s Assembly Bill 1709 by Assemblyman Josh Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, would bar children under 16 from many online platforms. There are other efforts at the federal level. Although details vary, these controls generally require age verification through biometrics or government IDs, parental consent for minors’ social media access, or a ban on minors’ access altogether.
According to Pew, most Americans support these types of measures. But, as I’ve written before, these restrictions hurt the people they claim to help. They burden everyone’s access to lawful speech, chill expression, and put sensitive data and privacy at risk. Worse, they make bureaucrats’ judgment about what is safe for children the default, forcing parents to surrender sensitive family data to override that default.
Age-verification laws shift decisions about what children can access from parents to the government. These blanket restrictions impose one solution on families with different circumstances. Parental decisions are not the government’s to make, and government involvement produces impractical results.
Many parents worry about their children’s online lives while recognizing the benefits of online access. But these blanket controls don’t let parents navigate that nuanced landscape, imposing restrictions across the board. And parents may believe that government solutions are sufficient, creating a false sense of safety and reducing parental involvement. Three months after banning teens from social media, the Australian regulator found a significant decline in parental awareness of children’s social media use, calling it a “potential unintended consequence” of the regulation.
The regulator also found that more than 80% of children continued using restricted social media after the ban and increasingly used age-restricted platforms such as Reddit. This is because such controls can often be evaded. When the UK’s Online Safety Act introduced age verification, virtual private network (VPN) provider Proton reported a 1,400% increase in sign-ups as users sought to evade the rules. “Children can easily circumvent restrictions through VPNs, shared accounts, or alternative devices, while parents develop a false sense of security relying on these ineffective barriers,” wrote Shane Tews for AEI. Children remain online, often unsupervised and at greater risk.
For concerned parents, government intervention isn’t the solution. Private initiatives are. Tech companies, competing for parents’ trust, increasingly provide tools to monitor and limit kids’ online lives. Android phones and iPhones offer parental controls that cap screen time and filter certain content, among other features. Social media companies offer native features such as screen time limits and comment filters. Third-party monitoring apps can flag inappropriate content and interactions. Companies offer hardware that blocks phones entirely, and others sell “dumb phones” to limit online exposure for teens and adults.
These tools are certainly not perfect. They don’t always work, and they are sometimes buggy. Some people object to apps that let parents read teens’ text messages, comparing it to parents reading private letters or diaries. And, like government controls, these tools can also be circumvented. But unlike mandates, these tools keep parents in charge without imposing controls that may be ineffective, invasive, unnecessary, or too strict for a particular child.
Parents should use their power as consumers to demand better market solutions rather than support bureaucratic controls that put everyone at risk. “Platforms can refine the tools they make available for parental oversight of minors’ accounts, publicize their availability, and educate parents on how to use them,” the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression wrote in a statement.
Delegating responsibility for children’s online lives to the government may seem easier and safer, but parents should resist that temptation. Market tools won’t solve everything, but they are preferable to a bureaucratic substitute for parenting that infringes on constitutional rights and parental autonomy.
Agustina Vergara Cid is a columnist for the Southern California News Group. Follow her on X @agustinavcid