Policy in Action: A Design Code That Protects Kids Online
- Overview of Kids Code Work
- Why This Matters
- Proposed Design Changes
- Impact to Date
- Further Resources
Following the release of The Social Dilemma, parents, youth advocates, and policymakers across the country began to advocate for legislation that would protect kids online. CHT has supported a broad coalition of organizations working to pass Kids Code legislation at the state level around the United States. Kids Code legislation shifts the core responsibility for digital product safety back to where it belongs — the tech companies designing the products themselves. Where enacted, Kids Code legislation provides safer, more supportive online experiences for young people if and when they go online.
Overview of Kids Code Work
The Kids Code is a legislative framework that is built around two principles: safety-by-design and privacy-by-default.
The Kids Code targets tech products that kids and teens regularly use, including social media sites, messaging platforms, and gaming apps. It would require that these products minimize harm to young users, and protect kids’ and teens’ online privacy.
The Kids Code is modeled on the success of the Age Appropriate Design code in the United Kingdom. The Kids Code has been passed in four states in the U.S., and, as of 2025, is being considered in another eight states.
Following the C.AI and OpenAI cases, Kids Code legislation has been deliberately updated to address design harms from chatbots, ensuring that the law protects all online spaces frequented by young users.
Why This Matters
Better product design is one of the most powerful and reliable ways to ensure that young people are safe when they are online. By changing how tech products are designed, downstream harms can be minimized or avoided altogether.
Families are doing the best they can in a rapidly evolving tech landscape. But parents remain at an asymmetric disadvantage, forced to play catch up as new technologies are rolled out into society. Responsibility for poorly designed tech products shouldn’t land on families, but on the developers designing these platforms, apps, games, and tools.
Design codes are content-neutral legislative solutions that incentivize sustainable innovation. What’s more, raising the bar on tech design for kids and teens opens the door for improved product design for all people, including adults.
Proposed Design Changes
Design products with safety and privacy in mind by default, and enforce strict data minimization and privacy practices.
Restrict or remove addictive features, and ban manipulative design tactics that target minors.
Prevent unknown, unconnected adult users from directly messaging children.
Publish clear, accessible policies for these digital products in order to help users understand their rights and options.
Covers chatbots that seek to elicit feelings of intimacy
Impact to Date
CHT supported the first U.S. Kids Code in California in 2021. By calling on technologists for support, we helped build consensus that innovation and safety go hand-in-hand in the tech design process, especially when designing for younger users. We also submitted an amicus brief to the court in favor of design-based arguments in 2022.
In 2024, CHT brought its Kids Code framework to Vermont and South Carolina, spearheading coalition activity. With partners in the space, CHT moved a Kids Code bill from introduction to the Vermont governor’s desk in six months — a process that would typically take two years. This laid a strong foundation for the bill to be set up for success in future legislative sessions.
CHT has engaged with local tech companies throughout our state-level efforts, spotlighting companies that already apply safety-by-design and privacy-by-default approaches to products. We elevate members of the tech community who show that alternative design pathways are possible.
Four states — California, Maryland, Nebraska, and Vermont — have passed the Kids Code into law. In total, over a dozen states have introduced Kids Codes across the country. The Kids Code is anticipated to be introduced across more states as momentum to protect kids online grows.
