Oppose HB8250 - Parents Decide Act

Vote no on HB8250, the Parents Decide Act. This bill would force every operating system user in America to hand over their date of birth to access their devices, creating massive databases of personal information that will become prime targets for hackers and identity thieves. The privacy risks far outweigh any supposed safety benefits. Adults shouldn't need to prove their age to use their own phones and computers, and mandatory disclosure requirements raise serious First Amendment concerns. The bill offers no cost-benefit analysis and no plan for what happens when these databases inevitably get breached. This won't even work as intended. Tech-savvy minors will simply lie about their age or migrate to foreign operating systems beyond federal reach. Meanwhile, operating system providers face billions in compliance costs that will be passed directly to consumers. The Federal Trade Commission gets just 180 days to write regulations for a system that doesn't exist yet, with a one-year implementation timeline that's completely unrealistic. Parents already have tools to monitor their children's device usage. We don't need federal mandates that compromise everyone's privacy to solve a problem that existing parental controls already address.