The Alliance for a Better Future criticizes the KIDS Act: no age verification or real protection for minors
The organization ABF urges the U.S. Congress not to pass the KIDS Act in its current form. The bill lacks a real duty of care, age verification, safeguards for chatbots and effective protection of children's privacy. The fast-tracked process prevented its flaws from being fixed.
By The AI Journal (via Cision PR Newswire) · June 26, 2026.
The Alliance for a Better Future (ABF) has published a critical analysis of the KIDS Act, the legislative proposal currently moving through the U.S. Congress aimed at protecting minors from the risks posed by Big Tech. In a statement issued from Washington, the organization acknowledges that Congress is seriously addressing the threat that Big Tech poses to children and welcomes that the question of preemption (federal primacy) has been approached responsibly through what is known as 'floor preemption.' However, it concludes that the current text of the bill is not the shield that American families need and deserve.
According to ABF, the KIDS Act has four fundamental shortcomings: the absence of a real duty of care toward minors; the lack of age-verification mechanisms; insufficient safeguards for AI chatbots; and a protection of children's privacy that it considers superficial. On this last point, the organization is explicit: parents must have control over their children's data until they turn 18.
Another focus of concern is the legal ambiguity of the text. ABF warns that certain wording could end up preempting (displacing) state common law, which would block court victories that affected families have won through great effort in the courts. For many parents who have lost a child linked to the use of digital platforms, those rulings represent the only available mechanism of accountability.
The organization further denounces that the legislative process was rushed, without enough time to fix the identified flaws before bringing the text to the floor. ABF makes an explicit appeal: Congress must not pass the KIDS Act in its current wording.
The statement closes with an industrial-policy argument: the United States leads global innovation precisely because it demands accountability from its industries. Big Tech, ABF maintains, must play by the same rules as any other sector with an obligation to keep its users safe.
As sector context, the KIDS Act is part of a broader legislative debate in the U.S. on the regulation of digital platforms and their impact on minors, which has intensified following congressional investigations, testimony from former Meta employees, and studies on the impact of social media on adolescent mental health. In parallel, the proliferation of AI chatbots with advanced conversational capabilities has added a new dimension to the debate: the possibility that minors interact with AI systems without adequate age or content safeguards.
ABF's statement does not detail the full technical analysis —it refers to a one-pager available on its website— so the statement should be read as a political position rather than an exhaustive legal analysis. Nevertheless, its concrete demands (age verification, duty of care, data protection until age 18, chatbot safeguards) align with those that various child-protection organizations have long been calling for in both the U.S. and the European Union.