Sponsors (3)
The bill tightens protections for minors and gives parents clearer controls and enforcement tools, but does so by centralizing and sharing sensitive age signals and imposing significant compliance, privacy, access, and competition costs on developers, platforms, and users.
Children and teens: apps must verify age and obtain verifiable parental consent before creating minor accounts or allowing purchases, substantially strengthening protections for minors online.
Parents and guardians: clearer tools and notices (defined parental accounts, verifiable parental consent, and required notifications on significant changes) make it easier to control and monitor minor accounts.
Children and families: age-verification data is limited and must be protected (restrictions on sharing with unaffiliated third parties, data minimization, and encryption requirements), reducing exposure of sensitive age signals.
App stores, developers, and especially small app businesses: significant new compliance and operational costs (verification systems, labeling, disclosures, re-checks, certifications) that are likely to be passed to consumers or reduce small developers' market access.
Children and families: collecting and transmitting age-category signals and real-time consent status centralizes sensitive data and could increase privacy risks if misused or breached.
Users (children and parents): mandatory verification and parental-consent steps plus imperfect verification methods can create friction, block legitimate access (false positives), or fail to protect some minors (false negatives), harming convenience and effectiveness.
Based on analysis of 20 sections of legislative text.
Requires U.S. app stores and developers to verify user ages, require verified parental consent for minors, provide age-category signals to apps, and makes the FTC the enforcer.
Official title: To safeguard children by providing parents with clear and accurate information about the apps downloaded and used by their children and to ensure proper parental consent is achieved, and for other purposes.
Introduced May 1, 2025 by John James · Last progress May 1, 2025
Requires U.S. app stores and app developers to collect and verify users’ ages, require verified parental accounts and verifiable parental consent for minors, and provide an age-category “signal” to developers so apps can enforce age-appropriate defaults and restrictions. The FTC enforces the law, state attorneys general may sue on behalf of residents, developers get a limited safe harbor if they rely in good faith on store signals, and states are preempted from enacting related laws. The Act becomes effective one year after enactment unless another date is specified.