I'm writing to urge you to oppose S. 5090, the Digital Age Assurance Act of 2026. While the intention behind protecting children online is understandable, this bill would cause significant harm without delivering meaningful safety improvements.
The legislation requires operating system providers to collect every user's age and transmit age-bracket signals to apps and websites. This creates a centralized system for tracking users' ages across the entire internet—a high-value target for hackers and data breaches. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation has warned, mandating age verification at this scale dramatically expands data collection while undermining privacy for everyone, not just children.
Children will easily circumvent these requirements by simply lying about their age, using siblings' accounts, or accessing devices that don't enforce the system. Meanwhile, adults and older teens could find themselves mistakenly blocked from lawful content or forced to surrender personal information to access services they've used for years.
The bill also preempts existing privacy protections including COPPA and FERPA, replacing them with a new framework that privacy advocates argue is less robust. Groups like the Chamber of Progress, Oakland Privacy, and Technet have raised serious concerns about how this would impact both users and businesses already struggling with compliance costs.
We need solutions that actually address online safety—better enforcement of existing laws, investment in digital literacy, and voluntary industry standards—rather than invasive infrastructure that surveils all users in the name of protecting minors.
Please vote against S. 5090 if it ever comes up for a vote.
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