To the editor:

As a mom, I’m constantly worried about what kids are doing online. Every week it seems like there’s a new app children want to download, and parents have no idea what half of them actually do or if they’re appropriate for different ages.

Our State Representative feels the same way and is taking action! Representative Robb Blasdel, a mom of two young girls, knows how important protecting our kids online is and I am thankful for her leadership on this issue!

I support the App Store Accountability Act, introduced as House Bill 226 and Senate Bill 167. This legislation would require app stores to get parental approval before children can download social media and other apps. Instead of trying to manage dozens of different platforms with their own confusing settings, parents will get one simple notification asking if they want to approve the download.

Right now, kids can just lie about their age when downloading apps. There’s no real way for parents to know what children are accessing until something goes wrong. The App Store Accountability Act changes that by putting parents back in control.

What’s great about this approach is that it protects our children’s privacy. Instead of requiring kids to provide personal information to countless apps and websites to verify their age, the process happens once at the app store level. This means apps don’t need to collect and store valuable personal data to determine if a child is underage, keeping our families’ sensitive information more secure.

Recent polling shows that 80% of Ohio parents support this idea. We’re not asking for the impossible — just simple tools that actually work. The App Store Accountability Act gives us exactly that.

Our legislators should listen to Ohio families and pass this common-sense legislation.

Daniella Clancy,

Columbiana