Congress should follow Utah's lead on protecting kids online with app store law

The Hill

22-05-2025

A new bill to regulate app stores has been introduced in Congress. This legislation will likely spark a debate over its constitutionality, but members of Congress who recognize this as an opportunity to help parents protect their children online should borrow from the example of state leadership to defend and pass the bill.
Utah recently became the first state in the nation to pass an App Store Accountability Act. The law requires app stores to ensure that users are adults or, if not, that a minor trying to make purchases or download apps has the consent of their parents. Both chambers of Utah's legislature approved the measure — with only four dissenting votes — and Gov. Spencer Cox (R) signed the bill in March.
Utah's example demonstrates that this approach is broadly popular and grounded in principle. Even so, some critics have suggested the Utah law presented an unconstitutional violation of free speech. That argument was not valid in the Utah debate and should not present a hurdle to approval of the federal bill.
If a constitutional argument emerges in the debate over the federal App Store Accountability Act, there are three strong counterarguments that reinforce the bill's legal and principled foundation.
First, the federal bill carefully avoids regulating the content of any message — it only addresses conduct. The legislation is akin to the very familiar practice of brick-and-mortar stores checking a customer's age before selling alcohol or tobacco (or even letting them use a tanning bed). Since we recognize that children and teens are at greater risk from some harmful products or activities, society has already deemed this practice reasonable.
It has become increasingly clear that social media use can create serious risks for young people, particularly for their mental health, and unsupervised app use can expose children to seriously dangerous material. But even absent this risk, using app stores can create contractual legal obligations for users. These are precisely the types of harms governments seek to prevent through age verification.
Second, and related to the first point, the law does not limit what a specific app creator or user can or cannot say. It merely ensures that children who may be entering into app-related service agreement contracts have their parents' guidance before doing so. This is particularly important when those contracts can result in recurring financial charges or give the child access to content with possible harmful effects.
Third, any inconvenience that these modest requirements create for app store providers, app developers and users is outweighed by the benefits of having reasonable safeguards for children and teens. The Supreme Court has upheld laws that prohibit businesses from providing material that is harmful to minors, even when such laws might create negligible burdens on stores and other customers.
Critics will understandably argue that there are some security and privacy risks in age verification. App stores, however, are well equipped to address these risks, and with strong precedent.
App stores already frequently gather and maintain sensitive information of users. They collect and store credit card numbers, demographic information, personal contacts and more.
This law merely directs them to make reasonable efforts to verify a user's age and parental consent. This information is not more difficult to collect and protect than other data they already manage.
The new federal proposal provides an appropriate and constitutional way to empower parents who want to help their children avoid harmful apps and unfair service contracts. Parents appreciate and need this type of support.
The experience of Utah suggests that this approach is welcome and popular. It makes sense at the national level as well.
William C. Duncan is the constitutional law and religious freedom fellow at the Sutherland Institute, an independent nonpartisan public policy think tank in Salt Lake City.