Congress is offering parents a deal: Commit your family’s most sensitive data (such as IDs and biometrics) to app stores, and in exchange, we’ll make it slightly harder for your children to use TikTok.
This sounds like a ridiculous deal that nobody would take — though it’s precisely what Congress is proposing with the App Store Accountability Act. The bill would mandate app stores (Google Play and Apple) to verify users’ ages and procure parental consent for minors, under the guise of “protect[ing] kids and empower[ing] American families.” But this bill would not only create a false sense of safety and protection for parents, but it would also actively put children (and all Americans) in danger.
The proposed mechanism to “protect” children targets the moment of app download. It restricts children’s app store accounts, such that parents must opt in to every download their child wants to make (even for apps not deemed inappropriate). To confirm parental consent, developers must collect personal data such as IDs and biometrics from the children, the parents, and everyone using app store services.
CONGRESS WANTS TO PROTECT KIDS ONLINE. ITS SOLUTION MAKES THEM MORE VULNERABLE
But this “protection” is an illusion. The ASAA only restricts app downloads — it doesn’t cover browsers. A child who wants to use YouTube without parental consent can simply use the web version of the platform instead of downloading the app. Less tech-savvy parents may think their children are protected from seeing inappropriate content because of the restrictions of the ASAA, but in reality, these restrictions are very easy to bypass.
This creates a dangerous false sense of safety for parents, who may rely on the alleged protections provided by this regulation and be less involved in monitoring their children’s online activity, ironically putting them at greater risk. Amy Bos, vice president of Government Affairs at NetChoice, explains that a similar approach was tried and failed in the U.K. When the regulation took effect, “VPN use skyrocketed 1400%, sending minors to less regulated spaces,” she elaborates. This bill wouldn’t provide any meaningful protection for children online.
The ASAA not only fails at protecting children, but also actively creates new dangers for them — and for all of the public. The bill requires every American, not just minors, to submit to age verification by providing sensitive data, such as IDs and biometric scans to Apple and Google, to be later shared with third parties. Are you an adult downloading Spotify to your phone? Your ID goes to the database. Downloading Duolingo? Or Solitaire? Same. This bill would create massive government-mandated databases vulnerable to security breaches that could expose millions of people to identity theft and other cybercrimes.
“When you increase the amount of information that is required to be stored, it increases their attractiveness as targets for hackers and other bad actors,” says Paul Taske, co-director of the NetChoice Litigation Center. We don’t have to imagine what this risk looks like in practice. Last October, Discord suffered a massive data breach that exposed the photo IDs of 70,000 users. If the ASAA passes, a breach would be orders of magnitude even bigger, with 91% of the public using smartphones, per Pew Research. This sort of database is irresistible to criminals.
Just imagine if Congress mandated every goods and services provider to check your ID and keep a copy of it (or upload it to a third-party database). You would get carded just to enter the supermarket, even if you don’t intend to buy alcohol, or when buying something at a pet store or a bookstore, or when trying to hire a service such as house cleaning — all by government mandate, and all in the name of “protecting kids” from inappropriate products and services they shouldn’t access. Americans would be rightly outraged at the idea of turning this country into a “papers, please” society in the name of false safety. The ASAA’s requirement should elicit the same response.
BIG TECH’S STICKY WEB HAS TRAPPED CHILDREN, ADDICTING AND EXPLOITING THEM
The internet can be a dangerous place for children, and parents’ concerns are justified. But the ASAA is not the right way to address these concerns. Tech companies are already tackling this problem by providing native tools such as Apple’s parental controls and Google Family Link, which help parents restrict and monitor their children’s phone use and the content they consume much more effectively than the proposed regulation. Government should focus on targeting actual threats to the rights of children and all Americans by specifically targeting bad actors online, not imposing sweeping regulations, says Bos.
Congress claims this bill would protect children, but parents should recognize how this mandate would expose their families’ most sensitive data in exchange for restrictions any teenager can bypass in seconds. All Americans should reject this as a bad deal.
Agustina Vergara Cid is a Young Voices senior contributor. Follow her on X: @agustinavcid
