Enlist the App Stores to Protect Kids Online
Joel Thayer | Wall Street Journal
Americans want to protect children from harmful social-media and internet content, but how? Several state bills that have sought to do so have hit a legal wall. The First Amendment generally allows for child-protection measures only as long as they don’t infringe on adults’ free speech. That raises a difficult question: How do social-media platforms determine a user’s age?
Age verification is essential but complicated. Courts have blocked laws requiring websites to verify users’ ages. In NetChoice v. Bonta (2023), a trade association challenged a California law requiring websites to limit certain content based on the user’s age. U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman wrote that “the steps a business would need to take to sufficiently estimate the age of child users would likely prevent both children and adults from accessing certain content.”
