New Year, Same Story: Age Verification Measures Distract from Sustainable Solutions
It didn’t take a crystal ball to guess that 2025 would bring a rush of age verification legislation. In our 2025 Tech Policy Forecast, the regulatory tea leaves indicated that app stores would be the new battle ground for pushing age verification, and all of the risks it entails, onto users. 2026 promises to deliver more of the same, with a fresh batch of proposed app store age verification legislation on top of the active bills from last year. While the concerns remain the same, better alternatives are emerging.
Federally, the United States House Energy and Commerce Committee is advancing a package of legislation that includes different age verification and social media regulation approaches under the name of youth safety. At the state level, a collection of bills, some new and some carried over from last year, are active around the country. Two are progressing in Alabama, four in Ohio, and others are in Alaska, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Michigan, Mississippi, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Virginia with more to follow.
The predecessors of these bills don’t have a particularly strong track record. Those that do pass have met repeated legal roadblocks, often preventing them from even taking effect. For instance, a federal judge temporarily blocked the Texas App Store Accountability Act on First Amendment Grounds in late December. The Texas law was set to become effective on January 1st of this year, but will first have to contend with the users it prevents from accessing Constitutionally protected speech. This legal battle will burden Texas taxpayers and likely proceed well into the year.
Other age verification measures are stopped from advancing because the concerns over user privacy and data, the realities of compliance, and the alternatives offered by the free market create a compelling case for avoiding the pitfalls that accompany age verification processes.
Last year, a massive data breach in the United Kingdom made headlines after the nation mandated age verification. This year, Roblox responded to pressure from stakeholders who were fed up with the opportunities for inappropriate content in the game by implementing age verification measures. The Roblox AI-powered age verification system was described by tech news journal, Wired, as “a complete mess” which prevented users from features they enjoyed but failed to accurately age-gate children.
Between the legal challenges, data breaches, and sheer unworkability of these measures, lawmakers have every reason to look elsewhere for solutions that both empower parents and protect children.
The free market continues to deliver and adapt to the changing tech landscape. The Pelican Institute compiled some of the newest tools available to families at the end of last year in 2025 Tools for Keeping Kids Safe Online: Innovations Empower Parents, but Parents Must Use Them. In responding to the concerns of their users rather than a mandate from a law, innovators and tech companies are able to act swiftly and with agility to create tools that suit their product and customer base the best. Parents and lawmakers will no doubt continue to rightfully call for a safer online environment for their children, but understanding the role that the free market can play will help that call assign responsibility in the right direction.
Links to Learn More
Kids’ Online Safety Requires Precision, Not Centralization-American Enterprise Institute
Roblox’s AI-Powered Age Verification Is a Complete Mess-WIRED
