Will ID verification be required for app store purchases?
This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter diving into a key story from the tech landscape. For insights on lawmakers’ efforts to regulate tech platforms, keep an eye on developments in this space. The Stepback lands in subscribers’ inboxes at 8 AM ET.
How it started
In the real world, age verification can be as straightforward as showing your driver’s license to buy a beer or an adult magazine. Advocates for stronger protections against minors accessing online pornography have long pushed for a similar system on the internet: online age verification. However, this concept presents unique challenges compared to the physical world, such as the risk of data breaches that could deter users from accessing legal content. In a landmark 2004 Supreme Court case, Ashcroft v. ACLU, the justices ruled that mandating age verification on porn sites was unconstitutional, as lawmakers had not demonstrated that less intrusive alternatives, like parental content filters, were ineffective.
Despite this, activists and many lawmakers have continued to target porn sites and other platforms they believe pose the greatest risks to children and teens, akin to what a local store would restrict. Last year, the Supreme Court opened the door to reconsidering age verification online, stating that the expansive and accessible nature of the internet necessitated a reevaluation of its previous stance, asserting that “adults have no First Amendment right to avoid age verification.”
Simultaneously, numerous state efforts to enforce age verification for social media access have faced legal challenges. While preventing minors from viewing pornography is one thing, creating barriers for teens and adults accessing a wide range of speech raises significant constitutional issues. Courts generally agree that minors lack the right to access porn, but imposing restrictions on both children and adults to access other legal content complicates matters. This has led some advocates and policymakers to shift their focus to a different type of platform that may be more comparable to a local store.
How it’s going
App stores serve as the entry point to many platforms that users engage with daily. While browsing websites on mobile or desktop is an option, most users prefer apps for a more immersive and seamless experience with their favorite social media and gaming platforms.
This centralized nature of mobile app stores, like those from Apple and Google, makes them prime targets for age verification initiatives. Instead of tackling millions of individual apps, supporters of app store age verification laws view these marketplaces as ideal checkpoints. This approach would allow users to submit their age information to just one or two companies once, rather than repeatedly sharing it with various services that may have less secure protocols whenever they want to download an app.
Parent advocates were instrumental in pushing for the initial version of the law that passed in Utah, with similar measures later adopted in Texas and Louisiana. Notably, this method gained support from major developers who would prefer the responsibility for age verification to rest primarily with app stores rather than their own platforms. This shift could place more accountability on app stores when young users encounter harmful content or individuals on social media. While Apple has been critical of this approach and has fought against such laws, Google has taken a different route, recently endorsing a separate method passed in California. Google argues that this law, which also has Meta’s backing, protects consumer privacy and emphasizes that keeping kids safe online is a “shared responsibility across the ecosystem.” The California model mandates that desktop or mobile operating systems collect the age or date of birth of the account holder at signup to share with the app store and relevant apps during downloads. However, under other law versions, determined users could still access similar sites through a browser instead of a mobile app.
What happens next
Age verification bills for app stores have reached the federal level, with two competing proposals introduced in a recent House package focused on online safety for kids. One, the App Store Accountability Act, mirrors the laws in Utah, Texas, and Louisiana, requiring strict age verification. The other, the Parents Over Platforms Act, supported by a group backed by Google and Apple, would not mandate age verification but would require app stores to collect users’ ages at account creation and relay that information to developers.
Sponsors of both bills have expressed a willingness to collaborate on a unified strategy, but it remains uncertain how that would work given their fundamentally different approaches to user age verification. While the House has moved more swiftly than anticipated on kids’ online safety legislation since its introduction late last year, Congress has struggled to finalize these proposals. Additionally, the first legal challenge to this approach has hit a snag, with a federal judge in Texas blocking the state’s version of the law that was set to take effect this month. This ongoing battle could eventually escalate to the Supreme Court.
However, changes are likely in the interim. For instance, Apple appears to recognize the growing support for app store-based age verification methods. While its CEO has actively lobbied against these proposals in Congress and to the Texas governor, Apple has also rolled out a feature allowing parents to set up kids’ accounts that share their age ranges with app developers.
While these laws aim to prevent minors from accessing potentially harmful content, they will also affect how adults interact with the internet. In the coming years, we’ll see whether internet users in the US will continue to navigate the web with minimal barriers or if age verification for app downloads becomes as routine as showing your ID to buy a drink.
By the way:
* The US is behind other countries that have implemented significant age restrictions online, such as Australia’s recent ban on social media accounts for users under 16. This is partly due to First Amendment concerns surrounding age verification mandates in US law, but the problematic rollout of the UK’s age verification rules also serves as a cautionary tale.
* There have been notable instances of companies withdrawing from states due to age verification laws, such as Pornhub in Texas and Bluesky in Mississippi. While this reduces content availability for users in those states (without a VPN), platforms may adapt as age gating laws spread and potentially align more closely. For example, Bluesky returned to Mississippi after upgrading its age assurance system to comply with the state’s law and Australia’s social media ban.
