Utah Legislation Would Require App Stores to Verify User Ages
The Utah Legislature passed an age verification bill Wednesday requiring app store operations to verify the age of their users and require parents of minors to agree before downloading the app.
The country becomes No. 1 in the United States To achieve this by such a law App Store Responsibility Lawas many states struggle to cope with the evolving age verification requirements of social media platforms and how to protect young users online. Lawmakers in several states have proposed bills that require app stores to verify children’s age through official identity or parental consent, but many have been blocked or failed to gain appeal.
The bill is now signed with Gov. Spencer Cox.
The bill is in line with Utah’s efforts to require age verification on social media sites. This will put the mobile app store burden on verification age, rather than relying on a single website to verify – a method social media platforms have long wanted.
Meta, Snap and X said in a joint statement: “Parents want a one-stop shop to verify their children’s age and allow them to download the app in a private way. The app store is the best place, and more than a quarter of states have introduced bills, introducing the App Store prom on the bill. We announced contraud off in Contraud off in Contraud for our landmark.
It is unclear how Apple and Google can adapt to their existing parental controls and policies to comply with the new laws. Apple and Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
But last week, Apple New child safety measures have been introduced Affects the settings of minors’ accounts and what they can access in the App Store. This includes the ability of parents to update their account ages before setting it incorrectly and finer apps for children of age grades. It also adds a way for parents to agree to share their child’s age range with app developers to show more age-appropriate content in the app store, but no exact date of birth or sensitive information was disclosed.
“Since many children in the U.S. don’t have government-issued IDs, parents in the U.S. will have to provide more sensitive documentation just to allow their kids to access children-friendly apps. This is not in the interest of user security or privacy.” Online security report Published last week.
Aisling Dawson, an analyst at ABI Research, said the broader meaning of the regulation should not be underestimated.
“While age verification for app developers is unlikely to be a panacea to limit the small amount of access to inappropriate content, Utah leaders lead the normative space,” she said. “Other online age verification laws exist; however, these laws do not explicitly require app developers to be proactive in age verification and application content.”
She believes that legal challenges should be expected as new Utah laws trigger similar legislative movements in other states in the coming years. This may include legal issues such as how to define material belonging to speech or expression that needs to be protected, those who curb freedom of expression can provide evidence of harm caused by online content, and technical and privacy protections related to the collection of data, which is related to the enforcement of the law.
Meanwhile, some critics believe that the latest changes may still attract attention to data privacy and freedom of speech.
Kerry Maeve Sheehan, Legal Advocacy Lawyer at the Alliance for Progress, Write In a blog post, the case “deceives the constitutional rights of adults and children.”
“While the bill claims to protect minors from inappropriate content, it ultimately imposes enormous restrictions on all Utah’s right to freedom of speech,” she wrote. “SB 142 is not only a misleading law; it represents a major shift in states seeking to control online speech, thus creating dangerous precedents for digital freedom.”
But some organizations, such as the Digital Childhood Alliance, praised the bill as an important milestone: “Utah is showing the state how to put children and parents first” Tweets. “This is an important step towards a safer online world for our children.”
