Social Media Laws Could End Anonymous Speech Online Without Making Anyone Safer
Recently, the House of Representatives passed the KIDS Act, an omnibus package of bills that could fundamentally change how all users experience the internet. This approach puts policymakers, not parents, in control of what their children see online. And it threatens speech and privacy rights for adult users, too.
Perhaps most importantly, it has been tried elsewhere. And in those places, it has failed. The result is always the same: the internet becomes much less interesting—and much less useful.
The KIDS Act combines a range of proposals that set new restrictions on everything from social media and messaging apps to video games and chatbots for kids and teens. While this new version may have removed some restrictions, it still applies to many broad categories of speech. This could limit important conversations around serious topics—including young people seeking help in supportive communities or openly discussing difficult issues like drug or alcohol use. Because of the heightened standards, however, many companies will begin to engage in age verification for all users, even though it is not required, to avoid potential liability.
The US is not alone in considering such proposals. If policymakers around the world continue down this path, the age of using the internet anonymously will be over.
The United Kingdom, for example, recently made headlines by moving to bar anyone under 16 from using social media and advanced a raft of further restrictions: government-mandated app curfews for 16- and 17-year-olds, along with a plethora of potential new regulations on everything from AI chatbots to messaging apps.
In effect, the UK has placed the government between users and the internet, dictating how much screen time and what information a person may access unless they first prove who they are. Australia banned under-16s from social media in late 2025, and similar bans have been considered in countries ranging from France to Malaysia.
Almost the entire case for the supposed mental health harms of social media rests on a single coincidence in time: measures of adolescent distress began climbing around 2010, just as smartphones became ubiquitous. But the arrow may point the other way, since young people who are already anxious or isolated are the ones most likely to seek support online.
That points to a possibility the bans ignore: that for many young people, connection online is protective rather than perilous. When the pandemic cut adolescents off from their schools and friends, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that those who stayed virtually connected to others—by phone, computer, or other device—reported markedly better mental health and were roughly half as likely to have attempted suicide as their more isolated peers.
And then there are the realities of what happens when such a policy is implemented. Even the most aggressive forms of internet regulation fail to achieve their goals of protecting young people, and, in some cases, they can make the situation worse. Since Australia banned under-16s from social media in December, the data so far indicate that the approach has largely failed. The majority of young people who had social media before the ban are still on social media.
The difference? It has actually made parents’ jobs even harder as their children, who are now trying to get around the ban, engage with content and sites that are more dangerous than the mainstream platforms covered by the ban.
But such bans harm more than just young users. Rules that require age verification mean that adults, too, will have to prove they are of age to engage in any covered activity online, whether asking a chatbot a question or posting on social media. A gate built to keep children out is, by necessity, a checkpoint that everyone must pass through — but not before surrendering their personal identification at the door, which the platform will keep. As such, they create privacy vulnerabilities for all internet users. One breach on the communication platform Discord resulted in more than 70,000 compromised IDs.
Individual families should certainly take their own concerns and values around internet use seriously. For some young people, social media is an extraordinary tool to develop a skill or to find community and overcome challenges. For others, it carries real risks that parents are best positioned to help them navigate.
But the answer to keeping children safe online lies with parents and communities supporting young people through a vulnerable period — not with policymakers turning the entire internet into an ID checkpoint.