Kansas Senate Bill 372 is a troubling approach to online youth safety

A version of the following public comment was submitted to the Kansas Senate Committee on the Judiciary on January 28, 2026.

The Technology Policy Project at Reason Foundation provides pro bono consulting to public officials and stakeholders to help design and implement artificial intelligence (AI), digital free speech, data security and privacy, child online safety, and tech industry competition policies. Our team brings practical, market-oriented strategies to help foster innovation, competition, and consumer choice through technology policies that work.

We support the intent behind these bills: to protect kids from content inappropriate for their age. Senate Bill 372 (SB 372), like many others introduced in state legislatures across the country, forces all users to hand over their personal information, such as a government-issued ID, or submit to a biometric facial scan for age verification, in order to access online applications and engage in free expression. And if parents wish to declare that their children are using a service with their permission, this bill would still require parents to submit this private, sensitive information first.

This heavy-handed and constitutionally troubling approach to online youth safety shuts out users seeking an avenue to exercise their right to anonymous speech and puts sensitive personal information at risk. Utah, California, and Texas have all passed legislation that is substantially similar to SB 372, resulting in expensive and unproductive litigation that does little to ensure the safety of children online today.

An alternative that empowers parents, protects rights, and holds companies to account

To that end, better policies like California's AB 1043 (2025) rely on parent declarations and age assurance. Instead of requiring all users to submit a government ID or any other invasive form of age verification, this approach allows parents to declare their children's age category. This declaration then translates into a requirement for app stores to send a digital signal to app developers indicating the age category a parent provided for their child. These age signals put app stores and developers on notice that they are dealing with children, and with that notice comes all the legal liability of dealing with children in the offline world.

We urge this committee to consider such an approach for Kansas parents and children, rather than the intrusive, privacy-violating regulations inherent in SB 372.