In Utah, which passed State-Endorsed Digital Identity (SEDI) legislation, Cardano Foundation-built Veridian has already demonstrated that digital identity can be delivered in a privacy-preserving way, allowing users to prove they are over or under a certain age without revealing 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 set up in the system from the start.
These are the standard bills that KIDS or KOSA should favor.
If the goal is to protect children, the tools should be narrow, targeted and minimally invasive. Broad mandates that push any platform toward more data, more storage, and greater reliance on identity are too blunt and risk creating a host of other problems alongside the ones they claim to solve.
A better approach is straightforward. Build for data minimization, limit storage, and use privacy-protecting verification where verification is truly needed. If digital trust can be established without revealing personal data, lawmakers should favor 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.
