Sponsors (2)
The bill would substantially tighten protections for children online—strengthening defaults, parental tools, content blocks, and federal oversight—but does so at the cost of significant compliance burdens, privacy and surveillance risks from age verification, possible preemption of stronger state rules, and increased legal uncertainty that could burden platforms and taxpayers.
Minors and their parents gain stronger, automatic protections because platforms must adopt most-protective default settings, parental controls, limits on recommendations/messaging, time limits, and in‑game restrictions.
Children and teens will be less likely to encounter sexual or other age-inappropriate material because covered platforms must block verified minors, restrict targeted recommendations, and apply content limits.
Parents and caregivers receive clearer, actionable tools and visibility (account settings, time/purchase limits, messaging approvals, playbooks and education) to manage minors' online experiences.
Platforms, verifiers, third-party auditors, and many businesses face substantial compliance, redesign, audit, and verification costs that could be passed to users, reduce services, or disadvantage small developers.
Requiring age verification and obligations to act when providers 'know' a user is a minor may push collection of sensitive identity or biometric data, raising privacy and surveillance risks for children and families and potential misuse of that data.
Federal preemption of state laws and narrow carve‑outs could block stronger or divergent state protections, create enforcement gaps, and generate cross-jurisdictional uncertainty about standards.
Based on analysis of 14 sections of legislative text.
Requires age verification, parental safeguards, chatbot disclosures/time limits, content restrictions for minors, FTC enforcement, and new research/awareness programs.
Requires online platforms, chatbots, and video-game services to adopt age verification, parental safeguards, content controls, and transparency to protect minors from sexual material, exploitation, narcotics promotion, gambling, and other harms. Creates new research, education, and interagency coordination programs, directs the FTC to enforce violations, and sets deadlines for studies, reports, and industry reviews. Imposes specific obligations on covered platforms and chatbot providers (disclosures, time-limit prompts, content restrictions), mandates commercially available age/identity verification technology for platforms with specified sexual-content exposure, establishes default protective settings in games, funds and coordinates studies and public-awareness programs, and preempts conflicting state regulation while preserving tort/criminal/consumer-protection laws. Effective one year after enactment unless another date is specified.
Official title: SCREEN Act
Introduced March 3, 2026 by Brett Guthrie · Last progress July 13, 2026