Idaho online safety bill would track a child's every click

Idaho lawmakers are right to be concerned about how social media affects children. Parents across the state worry about addictive apps, manipulative design, and the data-harvesting practices of major tech companies. Those concerns are real, bipartisan, and worth addressing.

But House Bill 542, the Stop Harms from Addictive Social Media Act, takes a series of concerning turns — and risks creating new dangers for children, parents, and Idaho’s digital economy.

At its core, H542 does not merely regulate social media. It mandates the creation of a vast, permanent tracking system that would monitor how long every user spends online, trigger escalating identity checks, and store increasingly sensitive personal data. That should give every Idahoan pause.

To comply with the bill, platforms would be required to track cumulative usage at various intervals and repeatedly re-verify users’ ages. That means logging minute-by-minute activity and tying it to verified identities — potentially including government IDs or biometric data.

The result would be a massive “honeypot” of sensitive information about minors and adults alike — a prime target for hackers, identity thieves, and foreign adversaries. We’ve seen time and again that no database is breach-proof. The more data that’s collected and retained, the greater the risk when — not if — that data is compromised.

Ironically, a bill meant to protect kids could end up exposing them to lifelong identity theft.

The bill’s requirement for ongoing re-verification every 100 hours of use turns age verification into a permanent surveillance mandate. Kids wouldn’t just prove their age once; they would be forced to repeatedly “show their papers” to private companies, normalizing constant monitoring as a condition of participation in modern life.

Unfortunately, this kind of infrastructure doesn’t disappear when a user turns 18. Once built, surveillance systems tend to expand — not shrink.

Idaho should be cautious about mandating systems that track behavior indefinitely, especially when they involve children.

H542 also requires platforms to meet government-defined “confidence thresholds” — 80% or 90% certainty that a user’s age is correct. These numbers may sound scientific, but in practice they are arbitrary and legally dangerous.

To hit those quotas and avoid lawsuits, companies would be pushed toward the most invasive verification methods available: facial scans, biometric analysis, or government-issued identification. Privacy-preserving, risk-based approaches would be crowded out by fear of liability.

When government dictates math instead of outcomes, it ends up dictating technology — whether intended to or not.

Perhaps most troubling is the bill’s private right of action, which could invite a wave of predatory litigation. With high statutory damages and rigid technical requirements, H542 may create a “sue-and-settle” environment where compliance becomes secondary to avoiding lawsuits.

The bill also fails to distinguish between high-risk social media platforms and low-risk online services. News sites with comment sections, e-commerce platforms with reviews, and professional networking tools could all be swept under the same regulatory burden as the largest social media giants.

This threatens Idaho’s growing digital economy and raises barriers for startups that don’t have teams of lawyers and compliance engineers on staff.

Finally, H542 quietly shifts authority away from families and toward the state. By mandating specific technical triggers and interventions, the bill tells parents that government — not families — knows best how to manage a child’s digital life.

True parental empowerment means giving parents tools and choices, not substituting government mandates for family judgment.

Idaho can protect children online without building surveillance systems, creating data honeypots, or unleashing litigation chaos. Smart policy should be targeted, flexible, and respectful of privacy, innovation, and parental authority.

H542 may be well-intentioned, but good intentions are not enough. Lawmakers should slow down, fix the bill’s structural flaws, and pursue solutions that protect kids without creating new and lasting harms.