The KIDS Act Would Require Age Checks To Get Online | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Skip to main content

AboutContact

Press

People

Opportunities

IssuesFree Speech

Privacy

Creativity and Innovation

Transparency

International

Security

Artifical Intelligence

Our WorkDeeplinks Blog

Press Releases

Events

Legal Cases

Whitepapers

Podcast

Annual Reports

Take ActionAction Center

Volunteer

Follow EFF

ToolsPrivacy Badger

Surveillance Self-Defense

Certbot

Atlas of Surveillance

Cover Your Tracks

Street Level Surveillance

apkeep

Shop

Donate

DonateDonate to EFF

Shop

Giving Societies

Sponsorships

Other Ways to Give

Membership FAQ

Email updates on news, actions,

and events in your area.

Join EFF Lists

Copyright (CC BY)

Trademark

Privacy Policy

Thanks

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Donate

If you use technology, this fight is yours.Donate today

EFFecting Change: If You Own It, Why Can't You Fix It? on July 23

The KIDS Act Would Require Age Checks To Get Online

DEEPLINKS BLOG

By Joe Mullin<br>June 24, 2026

The KIDS Act Would Require Age Checks To Get Online

Share It

Share on Mastodon<br>Share on Bluesky<br>Share on Facebook<br>Copy link

Within the next week, Congress is preparing to vote on the KIDS Act, a sprawling package of legislation that seeks to control Americans’ web browsing and private messaging. The package includes a revised version of the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, combined with a collection of other internet bills, study bills, reporting requirements, and new regulations. Instead of debating any of these proposals on their merits, lawmakers are attempting to move them all at once under an ultra-expedited process.

The package of cobbled-together bills is a mess, with different age-gating schemes for different services, using different standards. It’s a lot of complexity, and a lot of legal risk. Faced with that, many companies will conclude that the safest option is restrictive age-checking practices across their entire platforms.

Buried inside the KIDS Act are provisions that will push online services to verify all users’ ages, require government-directed moderation policies for online speech, and even create new rules about private and encrypted communications. While supporters continue to claim this bill protects minors online, its requirements come at the expense of privacy, free expression, and the ability of people of all ages to use the internet without revealing sensitive data.

Take action

Tell Congress to reject this age-gating bill

The KIDS Act Pressures Platforms to Check Everyone's Age

Supporters of KOSA have said the bill doesn’t require age verification. And technically, the KOSA section of the bill does say that KOSA shouldn’t be read to require age verification.

But if you read the rest of the bill, that disclaimer starts to look hollow.

Throughout the KOSA section of the legislation, special protections, controls, messaging settings, and parental tools are required whenever a website or app “knows or should have known” a user is a child (defined in the bill as anyone under 13) or a teen (defined as anyone between 13 and 16 years old).

The problem is a website operator doesn’t need actual knowledge that a user is a minor to get in legal trouble. It applies when a platform “knows or should have known” a user’s age—a low, negligence-style standard of knowledge. If an online service gets it wrong, it’s going to be up to courts and regulators to decide, after the fact, if an online service “should” have known a user was 16.

To try to avoid liability, services will have to determine which users are teenagers and which are not. Most won’t be able to simply trust their users. They’ll have to collect more information about age, before any lawsuit or government action arises. Some companies may respond by requesting driver's licenses or passports. Others will rely on age-estimation systems that attempt to guess users' ages by looking at existing activity or doing facial scans. Existing estimation systems make mistakes when estimating children’s ages correctly, which is a big problem when that is the population KOSA is trying to protect. And the systems fail more frequently for people of color, people with disabilities, and trans and nonbinary people.

The bill’s authors seem to know this is a problem. On the one hand, the new KOSA section says age verification is not required. On the other, it repeatedly imposes obligations that depend on knowing whether a user is under 17. But a disclaimer doesn’t magically eliminate legal risk, especially for smaller services and startups that can’t afford to defend lawsuits or fight regulators.

Take action

The "KIDS Act" Is an Age Surveillance Bill

KOSA is not the only part of this package that creates age-verification pressure. The SAFE BOTS Act, like KOSA, goes back to the standard that if a service “knows or should have known” that a user is a minor it can’t offer certain chatbot features.

The SCREEN...