Introduction

Two states have enacted legislation this year to regulate app stores to protect children from harmful content and practices. Other states are considering similar laws, as is the U.S. Congress. This analysis looks at the impetus for this legislation, the history of recently enacted laws, public opinion, and relevant legal issues. It will demonstrate that state app store regulations are necessary, supported by broad consensus, and consistent with constitutional principles.

The Need for Regulations

In the absence of age verification requirements, there are no limitations on what apps children or youth can download. This raises at least two significant concerns.

First, without age verification, minors can download any app, including paid apps. These downloads can create contractual obligations, including allowing access to information on phones or computers, agreeing to automatically recurring charges, and more. Minors cannot legally enter into contracts for good reasons. Our laws recognize that they are vulnerable in ways that adults are not. The right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children is protected for precisely this reason – so they can give guidance and direction as their children mature.

Second, apps can provide access to content and programs that are inappropriate and dangerous for underage users. The most obvious examples are apps that provide access to obscene or violent material. A 2024 Institute for Family Studies article explained, “93% of boys and 63% of girls report being exposed to internet pornography before the age of 18, with the average age of first exposure being 12 years old.”

Additionally, not all apps merely deliver content. They capture data on the identity of the user, which can include health information, the user’s location, contacts, personal data, photos, videos and more.

Another major concern relates to social media. The state of Utah has highlighted this issue, noting that Pew research found, “Up to 95% of youth ages 13–17 report using a social media platform, with more than a third saying they use social media ‘almost constantly.’” This, as the state explains, puts children at risk of poor mental health, feeling badly about themselves, lost time, exposure to hateful content, sleep problems, and cyberbullying. Users report feeling dependent or even addicted to social media. One particularly frightening statistic reported by the state is that “[a]lmost 60% of teenage girls say they’ve been contacted by a stranger on social media platforms in ways that make them feel uncomfortable.”

An additional challenge arises from the practice of app stores advertising age ratings for apps. The stores typically provide ratings for apps that suggest an appropriate minimum age for users, but there is reason to believe these ages are arbitrary and often inappropriate. This means that a child or parent relying on those ratings will not be adequately warned of the risks posed by use of the app.

State Legislation in 2025

Utah was the first state to enact legal regulations on app stores in March 2025. Utah’s law was designed to address the concerns outlined above. It requires app stores (and developers as relevant) to verify a user’s age when that person sets up an account, to require minors’ accounts to be connected to a parent’s account, to verify parental consent before a minor makes a purchase or downloads an app, and to limit unnecessary gathering of data beyond what’s needed for the verification. It also prohibits knowingly misrepresenting information about app content made available to parents.

If a minor is harmed by an app store or developer’s violation of these requirements, the minor or a parent can bring a civil suit for damages as well as costs and attorney fees. And by allowing parents to enforce its provisions in civil suits directly, the bill does not tax state or local resources in the same way a more complicated criminal enforcement process would.

The bill only requires app stores to use available technologies that are “reasonably designed to ensure accuracy” or that follow specifications that will be provided by the state’s Division of Consumer Protection. This allows for flexibility in a field where technologies are developing.

In May 2025, Texas passed a similar law.

Constitutionality of the Regulation

Some argue that this type of regulation somehow conflicts with the First Amendment protection of free speech. There are five reasons this fear is unfounded.

First, the bill carefully avoids regulating content, instead focusing on the conduct of selling apps regardless of the content or messages provided by those apps. It is like a very familiar practice of stores checking to make sure a purchaser is actually old enough to buy alcohol or cigarettes or even to use tanning beds. We recognize age-specific risks of some products and have enacted common-sense age verification practices. These laws regulate the conduct of selling to minors rather than any expression of a person or organization.

Second, and related to the first point, the app store regulations do not limit what a specific app creator or user can or can’t say. They merely ensure that children who may be entering into contracts have their parents’ guidance in doing so, particularly when those contracts can result in recurring charges or unsafe social media or other content.

Third, any inconvenience that these modest requirements create for app store providers, app developers, and users is outweighed by the benefits of having reasonable safeguards for children and teens. The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld laws that prohibit businesses from providing material that is harmful to minors, even when such laws might create minor burdens on stores and other customers. Thus, even if the law were stretched to treat selling apps as a form of speech, reasonable regulations meant to advance the compelling purpose of protecting children would justify the modest requirements imposed in these laws.

Fourth, the right of free speech does not mean that a speaker is guaranteed a right to an audience, particularly an audience of minors.

Fifth, while there are security and privacy risks in age verification, app stores already have to deal with sensitive information of users. They collect and store credit card numbers, demographic information, personal contacts, and more. This law merely directs them to make reasonable efforts to verify a user’s age and parental consent. This information is no more difficult to collect and protect than other sensitive data they already deal with.

Consensus Support for Regulation

The experience of enacting legislation to regulate app stores indicates that there is strong consensus in support of this regulation. Polling in Utah found 73% of likely voters supported app store regulation. This support was consistent across age, education and ideology differences. A poll conducted in Alabama, which is considering similar legislation, found 83% of likely voters supported the regulation, with support similarly manifest across partisan lines. In Texas, the support of likely voters was 75% with 79% of parents supporting the regulations.

Public support has been translated into legislative support as well. Only one member of the Utah Senate and three members of the House voted against it. Governor Spencer Cox signed the bill on March 26^th. In Texas, the House vote was 120-9 and the Senate approved 30-1. Governor Greg Abbott signed the bill on May 26.

Next Steps

Nearly a dozen other states are considering legislation similar to Utah and Texas. At the federal level, an “App Store Accountability Act” was introduced in Congress at the end of 2024. The experience of states so far suggests that these proposals will gain strong support because they employ a constitutionally sound approach to providing common-sense protection to children and parents.