Oppose S. 278, the Kids Off Social Media Act

I'm writing as a constituent to ask you to oppose S. 278, the Kids Off Social Media Act. I share the concern behind this bill. Social media can genuinely be bad for kids — I've read the same research and worried the same way as any parent. But this bill doesn't fix that problem; it creates a bigger one. S. 278 bars platforms from letting anyone under 13 hold an account. On paper, the bill doesn't require age verification. But you cannot keep a specific age group off a service without determining the age of everyone else using it, and children carry no meaningful online footprint. Any signup screening can be defeated in seconds. So in practice, platforms wanting to comply — or wanting to avoid costly liability — will move toward checking IDs for everybody. There's no middle ground between keeping under-13s off and knowing who is 13 and who is 12, who is 17 and who is 18. That's the danger. Age verification means more sensitive data tied to our identities, a bigger honeypot for hackers and for whoever demands access later. The EFF made this exact point in opposing the bill. Courts have already struck down similar state-level laws — Arkansas, California, Utah, Ohio — for exactly this reason, and legal scholars warn this hits First Amendment walls too. We can address social media harms without putting ID checks between every American and their right to speak online. Age is already gathered by other, less invasive means; shifting to verified-only speech because it's easier to legislate is the wrong trade. Please oppose S. 278. I'd appreciate knowing where you stand.