The privacy paradox of protecting kids online

In Utah, which passed State-Endorsed Digital Identity (SEDI) legislation, Cardano Foundation-built Veridian has already shown that digital identity can be delivered in a privacy-preserving way, allowing users to prove that they are over or under a specific age without exposing any other data. It’s a working model of what responsible verification can look like and shows trust does not require unnecessary disclosure. Privacy can be designed into the system from the start.

That is the standard bills like KIDS or KOSA should favor.

If the goal is to protect children, the tools should be narrow, purposeful, and minimally invasive. Broad mandates that push every platform toward more data, more retention, and greater dependence on identity are too blunt and risk creating a multitude of other problems alongside the ones they claim to solve.

A better approach is straightforward. Build for data minimization, limit retention, and use privacy-preserving verification where verification is truly needed. If digital trust can be established without exposing personal data, lawmakers should prefer that path. If safety can be improved without turning the internet into an identity checkpoint, that should be the only option.

Children deserve protection online. But they do not need a policy framework that makes everyone more visible in order to make the internet, and the companies that thrive on it, more accountable.