Sponsors (4)
Official title: Require operating system providers to require users to indicate their age and developers of applications, covered internet website operators, and browser providers to request a signal from operating system providers that indicates a user's age, and for other purposes.
Introduced July 22, 2026 by Andy Kim · Last progress July 22, 2026
The bill strengthens children's privacy and creates interoperable OS/browser-based age-signaling to reduce age-based profiling and repeated verifications, but it concentrates sensitive age data at platform/OS providers, increases compliance and litigation risks for developers and platforms, and may cause service frictions or higher costs that could be passed to consumers.
Children and families: preserves and strengthens limits on age-based profiling, targeted advertising, and sharing of children's data (preserves COPPA/FERPA, bans sale/combination of age-bracket signals, limits data-brokering and child-targeted ads).
Users and developers: establishes standardized OS/browser age-bracket signals and verifiable-credential pathways, reducing repetitive age checks and creating interoperable age-verification options and safe harbors for relying parties.
Parents: enables linking of parent/guardian accounts and a clear correction route so families can restore appropriate access and enforce parental controls.
Small developers, app stores, and platforms: face significant technical and ongoing compliance costs to implement signaling, verification, correction workflows, data segregation, and auditing—costs that may be passed to consumers or reduce available services.
Users (especially children and teens): concentrating age/DOB collection and centralized OS/browser signaling increases risks from device fingerprinting, profiling, or large-scale breaches because sensitive age data is held by fewer parties.
Misclassification and parental-linking burdens: users wrongly signaled as minors (or families without parental accounts) may be blocked from lawful content or face access hurdles, disproportionately affecting older teens and some families.
Based on analysis of 13 sections of legislative text.
Requires interoperable OS/browser age-bracket signals, limits collection/use/sale of age data, bans targeted ads to children, and gives the FTC enforcement authority with civil penalties.
Requires operating systems, browsers, app stores, apps, and websites to use interoperable, privacy-preserving age-bracket signals so online services can identify whether a user is a child and apply age-appropriate limits. It mandates OS providers collect/assign age brackets, requires developers and sites to rely on those signals, restricts collection/use/sale of age-bracket data (including bans on targeted advertising to children), and gives the FTC enforcement authority and civil penalties.