Sponsors (2)
The bill substantially tightens protections for minors online—through age verification, default protective settings, parental controls, and oversight—trading off significant compliance costs, privacy/surveillance risks from identity checks, potential overblocking and limits on minors' autonomy, and legal/preemption complexities that could chill services and state-level innovation.
Children and teens will be less likely to encounter sexual material and be exposed to sexual exploitation because covered platforms must block verified minors from access and limit targeted promotion of sexual content.
Parents and guardians gain concrete controls and visibility (default protective settings, view/change account settings, time limits, purchase restrictions, messaging approvals, in-game controls) to manage minors' online experiences.
Minors receive stronger default privacy and safety protections (most-protective defaults, limits on personalized recommendations and certain messaging features), reducing passive profiling and exploitative targeting.
Platforms, small developers, verifiers, and nonprofits will face substantial compliance, auditing, and redesign costs that could be passed to users, reduce services, or squeeze smaller competitors.
Requiring age verification and related identity checks risks collecting sensitive data (including biometric or identity-linked information), creating privacy, surveillance, and misuse risks for minors and families.
Federal preemption of state laws could block stronger or divergent state-level protections and create enforcement gaps or reduce local policy innovation.
Based on analysis of 14 sections of legislative text.
Requires age verification, parental controls, chatbot disclosures, and safety policies to limit minors’ access to sexual content and other online harms, enforced by the FTC.
Creates federal rules forcing online platforms, chatbot providers, and online video game companies to protect minors by verifying age, limiting access to sexual content and other age-inappropriate material, adding parental controls, requiring AI disclosure and crisis-resource notices, and funding research and education programs on youth online safety. Enforcement is handled by the Federal Trade Commission with civil penalties and allows state attorneys general to sue; many state laws are preempted where they conflict. The law phases in some requirements within one year and directs multiple studies, agency reports, and a Commerce-led partnership to publish best practices.
Official title: SCREEN Act
Introduced March 3, 2026 by Brett Guthrie · Last progress July 13, 2026