Do we really believe giving social media companies more access to our children’s personal and sensitive data will somehow keep our kids safe online? 

Following in the steps of other states such as Utah and Florida, Nevada is poised to consider a “Youth Online Safety Act” in next year’s legislative session — a bill aimed at tackling a growing youth mental health crisis by prohibiting children from freely accessing social media. 

Filed last week in anticipation of next year’s legislative session, Senate Bill 63 would require social media companies to verify the age of users, restrict content for children younger than 13, disable certain features for minors and in some cases require parental consent for minors using the platforms. 

To be sure, keeping kids safe online is a pretty admirable goal in our age of smartphones, social media madness and mental health challenges. However, attempting to legislate that goal into existence with age controls and mandatory content moderation will create a plethora of unintended consequences. 

For starters, effective age verification systems inherently require users to share deeply sensitive and personal information with third-party applications — information such as facial recognition scans, driver’s license numbers or other personal details that are often the target of hackers, identity thieves and other bad actors. 

Being forced to share such details in order to scroll through a social media feed will inherently bring a whole host of security concerns. As R Street’s Shoshanna Weisman put it in a report critical of such laws, “if platforms are required to have your government IDs and face scans, hackers and enemy governments can access them too.” 

Considering the fact that minors are consistently at an elevated risk of having their details used by identity criminals, this is hardly in keeping with the idea of making online safer. Experian, for example, estimates that one in four minors will become victims of “identity fraud or theft” before they turn 18 — an estimate that was made before numerous states began enacting laws requiring children and their parents to upload personal details to access widely used social platforms. 

The fear that such personal information might fall into the wrong hands isn’t far-fetched. Just this year 404 Media reported that the identity verification service used by some of the world’s largest social media platforms (including Tik Tok and X.com) had a spectacular security failure that exposed countless users to potential identity crimes. The company had, apparently, exposed a set of administrative credentials online for more than a year — potentially allowing hackers unfettered access to a full database of government IDs, identity documents and other information used in the verification process. 

Forcing even more children (or their parents) to upload such information for the trivial act of interacting with our increasingly online world isn’t a recipe for greater safety — regardless of how one feels about the potential mental and social harms of social media. 

And it won’t just be children exposed to an elevated level of risk while using these platforms. For any age restrictions to be even marginally effective, adults will have to endure such increased scrutiny as well — requiring every user on social media to upload their government-issued identification documents and other sensitive information to guarantee they’re “of age” to scroll a “for you page.” 

Even beyond the security risks, there are potential First Amendment concerns as well. 

Because there are countless ways to potentially sidestep low-effort age verification controls — such as using a VPN to disguise one’s location or merely entering in a false date of birth — any effort to effectively implement age restrictions on social media content will require a tremendous amount of identity verification as well. And requiring individuals to identify themselves before logging onto a platform will inherently require a deliberate erosion of online anonymity for social media users.

Such an erosion of anonymity could be a problem considering the First Amendment’s protection of anonymous speech and the courts’ historic agreement that online anonymity is a fundamental right. 

To be sure, none of this is to say that our increasingly online world can’t be made safer for children or that we should merely accept the status quo in perpetuity. Limiting phone use in schools and educating parents about the risks of social media, for example, would be excellent places to start that don’t carry the same potential for dangerous unintended consequences. 

Indeed, parents and educators are in a far better position than lawmakers to actually effect change. After all, the amount of “screen time” children have enjoyed has always been (and will always be) primarily the responsibility of parents or guardians — not a bunch of well-intentioned lawmakers imposing new rules on tech companies or their customers. 

Colorado’s Democratic Gov. Jared Polis made this precise point in a Meet the Press interview last year, saying “I have a 12-year-old and a 9-year-old. We don't allow them on social media yet … But I think really, fundamentally, the state can't be the parents for kids.” 

Regulating how and when children can access the online world is not only a legislative attempt to micromanage how parents control their children’s online habits, but it’s an ill-conceived policy bound to generate potentially disastrous unintended consequences in the process. And subjecting social media users of any age to the risk of such unintended consequences isn’t going to advance “online safety” — for children or the rest of us. 

Michael Schaus is a communications and branding expert based in Las Vegas, Nevada, and founder of Schaus Creative LLC — an agency dedicated to helping organizations, businesses and activists tell their story and motivate change. He has more than a decade of experience in public affairs commentary, having worked as a news director, columnist, political humorist, and most recently as the director of communications for a public policy think tank. Follow him at SchausCreative.com or on Twitter at @schausmichael.