Kids Online Safety Act
Protecting children on the internet is something I support. As of recent times, this has become a big topic for the United States government and the United Kingdom’s parliament. The United Kingdom and the United States have been pushing for better laws to protect children from content that is inappropriate or harmful. Over the years, minor laws have been passed or promoted to push for this idea. On July 25th, the UK changed their Online Safety Act to force people to give up their ID or identity to be able to access certain content or media., It’s all about “protecting children,” but I think not. While for a good cause, the way they are trying to do this isn’t safe at all.
You might ask, how is it not safe to show your ID or face on the internet? Well, first of all, this data is being stored by third party companies. The third party companies running social media websites, forums, etc. are responsible for your information, not the government. This isn’t safe at all. As an example, “haveibeenpwned.com,” shows how many data breaches there have been for the past decade. There have been hundreds of major websites that have been breached and leaked the information of millions of people. If you submit your information to a third party, nothing is stopping them from selling that information, getting hacked, or just publicly showing it.
Secondly, what’s stopping the government from having a backdoor to these companies? The government can use this to spy or peek at what you do online. The UK government had seen the backlash on this act. People avoided this age verification thing by using a VPN. What did the government do in response to this? They decided they want to try to make VPNs be behind an ID verification. Dame Rachel has been quoted in BBC’s “Stop children using VPNs to watch porn, ministers told”. He said “Of course, we need age verification on VPNs – it’s absolutely a loophole that needs closing and that’s one of my major recommendations.”. This means that younger UK citizens are more limited on the use of the internet. They will not be able to freely and anonymously browse the web. It shows how much more control the government wants to have over its people.
This act really doesn’t make children safe. This act will just cause children to use their parent’s documents, face, or identity to access these sites. In the past history of the internet, people who have been controlled by the government have always found a way to bypass it. The real protector of children on the internet is their parents. Their parents should be responsible for what their children do on the internet. They can not just give their kid an ipad and think that the internet will take care of their children for them. It shouldn’t even be the government’s responsibility to protect children, it’s the parent’s responsibility.
The United States of America also wants to pass the same type of laws like the United Kingdom. S.1748 – Kids Online Safety Act, is a bill that has been proposed as of recently. In S.1748 – Kids Online Safety Act, “This bill requires covered online platforms, including social media platforms, to implement tools and safeguards to protect users and visitors under the age of 17. Covered platforms are online platforms, video games, messaging applications, or video streaming services used or likely to be used by individuals under the age of 17, with specified exceptions.” These tools however, aren’t even doing anything. For example, youtube passed age verification on their platform on August 13th, 2025. This has done nothing in protecting children. It uses ai to think if you are a child. If you watch too much kids content as an adult, it will ask you for id. But, if you watch a lot of documentaries or news, you aren’t checked. Kids could be watching these more “mature” content and not be age checked.