Debate over age verification intensifies in Washington

The fight over a key internet protection for children is ramping up in Washington, where Big Tech companies are pinning the responsibility on each other as lawmakers push for stricter requirements.  

After months of action in the states, age verification legislation made its way to Congress last week, when Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rep. John James (R-Mich.) introduced a bill that would put the onus on app stores run by Apple and Google to verify all users’ ages.  

“Kids cannot consent — and any company that exposes them to addictive or adult material should be held accountable,” James said, adding the bill “holds Big Tech companies to the same standard as local corner stores.”  

The issue is uniquely pitting some of the country’s largest technology firms, including Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta, against other tech giants.

Meta is part of a new lobbying group, The Coalition for Competitive Mobile Experience, which launched in Washington last week with age verification on the app store as one of its main policy goals. The coalition is also focused on anticompetitive practices, and its executive director, Brandon Kressin, argued better age verification would exist if there was not "a lack of competition" among the app stores. 

The coalition maintains app stores are best suited to handle age verification because they already have the age data, while Apple and Google argue the approach would still require sharing data with app-makers.  

Lee and James’s bill, titled the App Store Accountability Act, would be the first of its kind at the federal level. It would require app stores to determine a user's age “category,” which differentiates age groups younger than 18, and then send the data to app developers.  

Parents or guardians would also need to give permission for users who are minors to access the app store. This is aimed at disrupting "the child-to-stranger pipeline,” Lee explained in an op-ed published in The Hill last week with Michael Toscano, director of the Family First Technology Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies. 

The legislation “tackles the grave danger of apps systemically misleading parents with deceptive ratings, funneling millions of children toward dangerous and inappropriate content,” Lee and Toscano wrote.  

The bill resembles efforts underway in several U.S. states, including Lee’s home state of Utah — the first in the country to pass a law putting the responsibility on app stores. The Utah law is slated to take effect Wednesday. 

More than a dozen states proposed similar bills this year.  

It comes amid a broader push in Congress to pass kids online safety legislation after lawmakers failed to pass most related bills last term. The issue is hotly contested issue among lawmakers and policy groups, but consensus is hard to come by. 

Lawmakers were handed a rare win last month with the passage of the Take It Down Act, a bill criminalizing deepfake revenge porn. It now heads to President Trump’s desk, and he indicated earlier this year he would sign it.  

“We’ve seen excitement in the tech policy space with the Take It Down Act...There was a significant moment and progress here that empowered Congress to [say], ‘look, we can legislate here, "said Andrew Zack, the policy manager for the nonprofit Family Online Safety Institute.  

Still, Zack noted the age verification bill is “partisan,” and there is not yet a coalition in Congress to “fully embrace the app store [as the] end all be all.” 

The proposal could face hurdles even with Big Tech critics in Congress.  

“Age verification is largely ineffective,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told The Hill. “It is so easily worked around by young people, who frankly think it’s laughable that we would rely on age verification to protect them.”  

Blumenthal was the co-lead on the Kids Online Safety Act, a bill to create regulations for the kinds of features tech and social media companies offer kids online. It has failed to pass in recent years but is expected to be reintroduced this session.

Meta, X and Snap quickly came out in support of the Lee-James bill, writing in a joint statement that parents would be “spared the burden of repeated approvals and age verification requirements across the countless apps.” 

Meta has taken heat for its platforms’ impact on children and is facing numerous lawsuits on the issue. 

Less than a year after CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized to families during a congressional hearing, Instagram rolled out new “Teen Accounts,” and said last month it is using artificial intelligence technology to detect accounts of teenagers posing as adults.  

A Meta spokesperson pointed to these features while noting the “most effective way to understand age is by obtaining.”  

In many policy conversations, these social media platforms are grouped together with tech giants Apple and Google. But this time, the two app store operators fall on the other side of the argument.  

Apple and Google contend exchanging data between stores and apps still risks adults' and minors’ privacy.  

In a February white paper, Apple argued a requirement to verify age on the actual app marketplace would make users hand over sensitive information when only a limited number of apps need such specific information for a small number of users.  

“That means giving us data like a driver’s license, passport, or national identification number (such as a Social Security number), even if we don't need it,” the company paper said. “And because many kids in the U.S. don’t have government-issued IDs, parents in the U.S. will have to provide even more sensitive documentation just to allow their child to access apps meant for children.”  

A Google spokesperson told The Hill the company believes in a “shared responsibility between app stores and developers.” 

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Miss.), another Big Tech critic, chaffed at Apple and Google’s argument.   

“Oh, of course Apple and Google say that there’s no technology on Earth that can make this work. I mean, it’s ridiculous,” he told The Hill.  

While the federal proposal markets itself as boosting children’s safety, various tech advocacy groups warned it will not be an adequate solution and opens the doors to a host of privacy issues.  

The Lee-James bill only says app stores will use “commercially reasonable methods” and does not provide specifics on methods.  

“This proposed solution is not proportional to the risk. It is not likely privacy preserving or secure. It is not rights respecting ... and it appears more intrusive than effective,” Zack said, noting it does not make clear how app stores would be expected to verify users’ ages. 

The bill suggests app ratings are sometimes inconsistent and misleading, so placing all age verification in one place would prevent children from accessing dangerous content. But tech observers said this ignores the host of other ways children are exposed, such as internet browsers and gaming systems.  

“A nationwide mandate that any one entity perform this task is just the wrong way to go about this,” Matthew Schruers, the CEO of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, told The Hill. Apple and Google, along with Meta, are members of the trade association.  

“If we’re only concerned about an app or kids accessing content through an app, that could completely miss a preinstalled internet browser where they might not ever have to go through age verification,” he added.  

Schruers argued conversations over what content is suitable for children are “best around the kitchen table.”  

Maureen Flatley, an adviser with Stop Child Predators, said the federal proposal “usurps the responsibility of parents.”  

“These decisions that are being now hoisted on the government should remain with parents and at the end of the day, not every kid is in the same place developmentally,” Flatley said. “I really feel that parents are probably the best people to determine whether or not their kids are ready for certain things.”