In Utah, which passed state-backed digital identity (SEDI) legislation, Veridian, created by the Cardano Foundation, has already demonstrated that digital identity can be delivered in a privacy-preserving way, allowing users to prove that they are roughly a specific age without exposing any other data. It is a working model of what responsible verification can look like and shows that trust does not require unnecessary disclosure. Privacy can be designed into the system from the beginning.
Those are the standard bills like KIDS or KOSA they should favor.
If the goal is to protect children, the tools must be narrow, purposeful and minimally invasive. The broad mandates pushing each platform toward more data, more retention, and greater reliance on identity are too forceful and risk creating a host of other problems beyond the ones they claim to solve.
A better approach is simple. Create to minimize data, limit retention, and use verification to preserve privacy when verification is truly necessary. If digital trust can be established without exposing personal data, lawmakers should prefer that path. If security can be improved without turning the Internet into an identity checkpoint, that should be the only option.
Children deserve protection online. But they don’t need a policy framework that makes everyone more visible to make the Internet and the companies that thrive on it more accountable.
