As a mother of seven children, I have spent decades learning how to navigate the beautiful, challenging, and sometimes exhausting work of raising the next generation. Today’s parents are facing an entirely different kind of battle than our parents did. We aren’t just competing with neighborhood distractions or late-night television; we are up against a multi-trillion-dollar industry designed to bypass parents entirely and capture the hearts and minds of our children.

Let’s be entirely clear about the world we live in: Artificial Intelligence and unregulated digital tech hurts kids. Big Tech is not your friend, chatbots should not be your child’s confidants, and tech companies do not share our foundational Alabama values. For too long, these companies have treated millions of American children like lab rats, developing and releasing addictive algorithms, predatory materials, and invasive software into the wild for profit, only reacting after the irreversible damage has been done. Our children deserve proactive protection, and parents desperately need help to provide it.

The battle lines have moved beyond simply screen time. We are now in an era where AI companions are being marketed to lonely and impressionable kids. These programs are designed to monetize not just our children’s limited attention, but their very affection. A child’s innocence and capacity for deep connection are sacred gifts; they are absolutely not for sale to Silicon Valley developers or anyone else looking to boost quarterly returns.

When the system is broken, government should be on the side of parents and children, not Big Tech. Parents cannot protect their children if they are locked out of the digital ecosystem.

Last year, Alabama passed a law aimed at filtering out obscene content. This year, Alabama leaders made history by unanimously passing the App Store Accountability Act. Signed by Governor Kay Ivey, this landmark law acknowledges a simple truth: app stores are the centralized gatekeepers to our children’s digital lives. By placing the responsibility at the point of download, this law creates a “one-stop shop” for age verification and parental consent. It effectively hands the keys back to moms and dads, ensuring they must give permission before a minor can download an app or be exposed to unrated, predatory in-app content.

It is a strong start, but there is much more to do.

Securing our children’s digital lives is more than a localized family issue; it is a profound matter of national security. Our global adversaries understand exactly what is at stake. China deliberately safeguards its next generation from the corrosive effects of highly addictive, mind-numbing social algorithms within its own borders, while happily exporting those exact tools to intentionally undermine ours. They want us to sacrifice our next generation’s mental and moral focus while they fiercely protect their own.

If the United States is to lead the world in advanced technologies, we must raise a generation capable of mastering that technology, rather than a generation mastered by it. Leading the future requires protecting the leaders of tomorrow.

Alabama has shown the nation what true child protection looks like by demanding digital accountability. We must continue to build a legal and cultural framework where individual liberty, parental authority, and child safety are fiercely defended.

Our children are our nation’s future, endowed by their Creator with inherent dignity. It’s time to demand that corporations stop treating them like test subjects and start protecting them like the irreplaceable treasures they are.