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On Wednesday, Utah Governor Spencer Cox enacted a groundbreaking piece of legislation that mandates mobile app stores operated by major tech companies, Apple and Google, to implement age verification protocols for users under 18. This law signifies a major shift in responsibility, shifting the burden of verification from individual applications such as Instagram and Snapchat to the app stores themselves.
Titled the App Store Accountability Act, or S.B. 142, this legislation is the first of its kind in the United States and may encourage other states, including California and South Carolina, to introduce similar measures aimed at safeguarding minors in the digital space.
Backers of the law argue it seeks to enhance the protection of children, who may not fully comprehend the complexities of app terms of service. Todd Weiler, a Republican state senator and sponsor of the bill, emphasized this concern. “For the past decade or longer, Instagram has rated itself as friendly for 12-year-olds. It’s not,” he remarked during a committee hearing earlier this year.
Under the new law, Apple and Google will be required to conduct age verification upon account creation. This process may involve payment methods like credit cards to ensure that parental permissions are properly secured. If an individual under 18 attempts to set up an app store account, it will need to be associated with a parent’s account or require additional documentation for verification. Parents will also have to authorize any in-app purchases made by their children.
As of Wednesday, neither Apple nor Google had provided comments regarding the new law. The statute is set to come into force on May 7, although it is anticipated to face legal challenges concerning its constitutionality. Utah had previously introduced a similar age-verification law for adult content in 2023, which has raised free speech concerns and is currently under review by the Supreme Court.
This legislative development adds another chapter to the ongoing tensions between social media companies, particularly Meta, which has publicly expressed its support for the new law. Meta argues that centralizing age verification at the app store level would provide a practical solution for mitigating risks for minors, rather than placing the responsibility on individual applications. This shift appears to be part of a broader strategy for Meta to navigate regulatory pressures while directing antitrust scrutiny towards Apple.
“Parents want a one-stop shop to verify their child’s age and grant permission for them to download apps in a privacy-preserving way,” a joint statement from Meta, Snap, and X read. They argue that the app store is the most effective place to implement such age verification processes, and with many states already proposing similar bills, this trend may grow.
In contrast, Apple contends that individual apps should handle age verification. The company has expressed concern about privacy implications and the necessity of collecting sensitive data for this purpose, stating that addressing age-restricted content online should be confined to the specific applications that host it.
Google has raised warnings regarding the potential privacy and safety risks associated with the Utah law. In a recent blog post, Google’s Director of Public Policy, Kareem Ghanem, criticized the legislative trend driven by companies like Meta, asserting that these proposals could jeopardize minors’ privacy without effectively countering the issues prompting legislative action.
The legislative push for stringent age verification protocols follows a recent congressional hearing on online child safety, where executives from various social media companies faced scrutiny over their platforms’ roles in online child exploitation. During this hearing, Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly displayed signs of distress when confronted by senators who held him accountable for the societal impacts of his company’s services. Despite these pressures, a related legislative proposal, the Kids Online Safety Act, did not progress in Congress before the end of the year.
Meta also continues to confront a multitude of lawsuits by various states regarding the implications of its platforms on children’s welfare on Facebook and Instagram.
— CNBC’s Jonathan Vanian contributed to this report.
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