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U.S. states consider App Store age-verification laws

MacDailyNews

Feb 25

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The battle over online child safety is heating up again in state legislatures nationwide in 2025, setting social-media giant Meta Platforms against app-store powerhouses Apple and Google in a clash over who should handle user age verification. At least nine states, such as Utah and South Carolina, have recently introduced bills that would mandate app-store operators to verify users’ ages and secure parental consent before allowing minors to download apps. Over 60 child-safety advocates are banding together in a fresh coalition to advocate for the adoption of app-store age-verification laws across the country.

Amrith Ramkumar and Meghan Bobrowsky for The Wall Street Journal:
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Both Apple and Meta think the onus to verify user ages shouldn’t be on them. Apple last year helped kill a bill in Louisiana that would have forced app stores to handle age verification. Meta, along with social-media companies Snap and X, last week sent a letter to legislators in South Dakota arguing app-store verification would be simplest since app stores already collect user information.
“It looks like the policy-debate equivalent of a game of ‘not it,’” said Kate Ruane, director of a free-speech campaign at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit that has opposed many child-safety laws on the grounds that they are ineffective and infringe on free speech and privacy.
The debate underscores the pressure facing lawmakers after years of failed legislative efforts… “It’s a lot easier to target two app stores than it is to target 10,000 developers,” said Todd Weiler, a Republican state senator sponsoring the Utah bill.
Apple and Google have said they already take many steps to help parents control the content seen by their children.
Apple maintains that apps are better suited to handle age verification and that requiring the iPhone maker to do it could lead to excessive sharing of user ages with virtually every app.

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MacDailyNews Note: Find out more about using parental controls on your child’s iPhone or iPad here.

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