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Just a couple of weeks into the new year, state legislators appear to be watching and waiting to see how things shake out with the new Trump administration.
But despite the uncertainty, one issue—as expected—has already emerged as a priority in some statehouses: verifying the age of Internet users to protect children from explicit or harmful material.
According to LexisNexis® State Net® data, at least nine Internet age-verification bills have been prefiled for the 2025 sessions in six states since November 1:
• Missouri HB 236 by Rep. Sherri Gallick (R), which would create a “civil liability for publishing or distributing material harmful to minors on the internet.”
• Nevada SB 63 from the Senate Commerce and Labor Committee, which would require social media platforms to establish an age-verification system to determine whether a user is a minor before allowing an account to be created.
• Oklahoma SB 53 by Sen. Dave Rader (R), which would modify the state’s laws on child sexual abuse to include distributing explicit material without verifying the receiver’s age.
• South Carolina HB 3406 by Rep. Brandon Guffey (R), which would prohibit online platforms from providing pornographic content to users without verifying their age first.
• Two bills from Texas Rep. Mary E. Gonzalez (D), HB 421 and HB 581, which would require age verification by creators of deepfakes to ensure the individuals they’re mimicking are not minors and “artificial sexual material harmful to children” to ensure that children don’t receive digitally created sexual images.
• Another bill in Texas (HB 186) by Rep. Jaren Patterson (R), which would prohibit children from opening accounts with social media platforms altogether, thereby requiring the platforms to verify the age of potential users.
• Wyoming HB 43 by Rep. Martha Lawley (R), which would require websites that post material harmful to children to verify user’s ages before granting them access.
South Carolina’s Guffey also prefiled another bill (HB 3405) that would require app store providers like Apple and Google to verify the age of users. Utah Sen. Todd Weiler (R) has drafted legislation to make app stores responsible for verifying users ages. And in October a legislative study committee in South Dakota voted unanimously to send a pair of app store age-verification proposals to the Legislative Research Council for drafting for the 2025 session.
In November, we reported that while social media companies have been pushing back against age verification legislation in the courts, Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta has begun pushing for legislation to make app stores the primary entity responsible for so-called age-gating of internet users.
Meta sold Louisiana Rep. Kim Carver (R) on that idea last year. The lawmaker included language requiring app store age verification as part of a bill (HB 577) aimed at making the web safe for children. But although the bill was passed unanimously by the House, Carver removed the app store language from the measure when it was in the Senate, after a lobbying effort from Apple that she told the Wall Street Journal was “all day, every day.”
Legislation dealing with the verification of Internet users’ ages to protect minors from harmful content has been prefiled for the 2025 session in at least six states, according to LexisNexis State Net data. One of those states, South Carolina, has prefiled a bill that would make app stores like those operated by Apple and Google responsible for such age gating.
The new app store age-verification proposals in South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah will likely face similar opposition from Apple and Google.
Guffey told SNCJ last week that he hadn’t spoken to anyone about HB 3405 yet because his state’s legislative session didn’t begin until January 14. He also said he wasn’t sure what the prospects for the measure were, as he’s just entering his second term in the legislature and doesn’t know the “magic formula” for getting bills heard yet.
But he said he believes what he’s proposing is sound policy.
“I look at it similar to a child buying cigarettes,” he said.
RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company isn’t involved in the transaction when a minor tries to buy a pack of cigarettes. But a convenience store that sells the company’s cigarettes is. Under Guffey’s bill, app stores would fulfill the same function with respect to the apps needed to access social media and other online platforms.
Utah’s Sen. Weiler, meanwhile, said in a text that he believes the prospects for his bill are “good” this year because he’s seeing “a lot of support” for it from his colleagues in the Legislature.
“Utah’s Legislature has already doubled down against Meta et al. and we’re not backing down,” he said in the text.
As we previously reported, the new app store front in the ongoing fight over age gating is poised to touch off a tech battle royale in 2025—and that could definitely still be on the horizon.
The number of other age-verification proposals already in motion this early in the year, meanwhile, just speaks to how hot the issue has become in capitols across the country.
—By SNCJ Correspondent BRIAN JOSEPH
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