No, these bills do NOT protect children. In fact, vulnerable children could have life-saving resources and information censored because federal or state governments deem the material to be “harmful” to them. In fact another bad internet bill that has propped up in Congress before, the EARN IT Act; would’ve made CSAM investigations harder and made it more likely offenders would walk free. Besides, it is NOT the federal or state government’s job to decide what is and isn’t offensive to children; that responsibility ultimately falls to the parents. Device manufacturers, social media platforms, and internet service providers offer tools called parental controls that allow parents to decide what their children can or can’t access and how much time they can spend on various devices, sites, and apps.
If any of these bills become law; they will have global implications. The United Kingdom and Australia have enacted similar laws and some platforms have already implemented global age-verification mandates whether to ensure compliance or for different reasons. Since a large portion of internet companies are based in the United States, if they were to enact similar laws other platforms would likely impose age-verification site wide regardless of if you are an American or not. Additionally other countries are proposing similar legislation.
Wrong! Congress has tried for a long time to censor and harm the internet but due to public backlash these attempts typically fail. For example, in 2011 into 2012, Congress was discussing two bad internet bills; the Stop Online Piracy Act and the PROTECT IP Act. Due to massive public backlash against both of these bills, neither of them became law and they both subsequently went away. The point is, organized opposition works, and enough of us tell Congress that we oppose these bills, they WILL listen.