Texas passes App Store age verification law, despite Tim Cook's concerns
Texas will now require age verification for use of the iOS App Store, thanks to the state's App Store Accountability Act, which was passed against Apple's wishes.
Texas's App Store Accountability Act has been signed into law, despite Apple's wishes.
On Tuesday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed into law an act that requires Apple and Google to verify the ages of App Store users. If a user is under the age of 18, their account must be linked to a parent or guardian, who would then have to approve each app download.
Apple's attempts to argue against the bill, which included a phone call from Apple CEO Tim Cook to Governor Abbott, have seemingly failed. As noted by Reuters, Texas' App Store Accountability will take effect on January 1, 2026. A similar bill in Utah has already passed and took effect on May 7, 2025.
Legislators claim the act itself was created to protect children and prevent them from accessing age-inappropriate content. It's meant to give parents more control over their children's online activity and to comply with the fact that minors can't legally consent to app terms.
Before the bill was signed into law, Apple deployed six lobbyists in Texas and funded local advertising campaigns, which said the bill was "backed by porn websites," among other things.
Apple claimed the bill would force it to collect and store sensitive personal data, like government IDs or other identifying information, from all users, not just children. The iPhone maker's arguments, however, were not enough to prevent the App Store Accountability Act from becoming law in Texas.
While Apple criticized the App Store Accountability Act, some companies have expressed support for it. Meta, Snap, and X applauded the bill, which is in line with their previous statements.
"Parents want a one-stop shop to verify their child's age and grant permission for them to download apps in a privacy-preserving way," said the social media companies. "The app store is the best place for it, and more than one-third of US states have introduced bills recognizing the central role app stores play."
Utah's law and Texas's App Store Accountability Act are part of a broader push by state legislatures to regulate tech companies in the absence of federal action. They could soon become a model for similar efforts across the United States, and companies like Apple and Google are aware of this.
In February 2025, Apple published a whitepaper detailing the age assurance features it would be implementing. Through a new developer API, Apple wanted to make it easier for parents to set up App Store accounts for their children, but it remains to be seen if the company will need further measures to meet the requirements of the bill.
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Comments
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/04/digital-identities-and-future-age-verification-europe ;
There are plenty of products that work at the router level to block access to harmful websites and Apple at least has acceptable parental controls
via Screen Time. The Law of Least Action would put the protection at the gateway or local. Just like we have door locks that prevent casual access to our
homes. We don't have to send our house key to the regional government office or to anyone else.
The moment that you are having additional age verification, you are having to store sensitive information. Since the App Store (and Google Play for that matter) would be known for having to store not just the date of birth but some other verification of the age of a child, you now have a known location to try to get all sorts of PII (Personal Identifiable Information). So, by doing this "for our children" you have in effect made them LESS SECURE.
Also, the argument of "parents can't be bothered or ill-informed" is making other entities or people responsible for your kids instead of the parents. It is a nonsense argument at best; and a dangerous one at the worst.
Not exactly true. In reality, setting up Screen Time and App Store preferences for children of different age groups is quite complicated. The system works slowly (e.g., approvals via iMessage), and it’s not cross-platform. So having age-based limits at the App Store level does make sense.
An Apple ID already contains enough private information, so no additional data needs to be shared. Privacy isn’t a concern in this case because if a child’s account is connected to a parent’s, no personal information is required, but if it isn't — then parents have no control. That’s exactly the loophole that App Store-level age management is meant to address.
And that's information that must be uploaded and stored in order to have proof of age.
Worse, we don't have any sort of standardized API associating "proof of age" such that we can simply ask "is this user old enough" w/o giving away more information than we should.
The reality is this is a nightmare for children and their privacy. I hope if legislators demand such a terrible system that Apple provides the best version of one we could get. One that preserves privacy and security of every user.
Why is it we expect companies to parent our kids? Why should companies be forced to make up for the fact that some parents are lazy? Why should my experience as a parent of two teen girls be degraded (having to setup all this extra verification) because other parents are lazy and can't spend 10 minutes with some AI bot giving them step-by-step on how to setup a family account and control the logins of their kids?
You want to say that kids under a certain age can't buy a phone, or device, on their own? great. Regulate the sale of the product, which is the purview of government. Don't regulate what I do with it after it is purchased, that infringes on my rights to do what I want with my property.
Also isn't Texas, and Mr. Abbott, all about parental rights to allow us to do what we want with our children? Oh wait, that's only as long as you do it the way they want.
And Apple is known for being privacy-centric. That's not getting thrown out the window just because they are now being forced to make sure they're authorizing the right people.
The law is a comically evil broach of basic rights. The parents should be the ones that decide how their kids access the internet and what apps they use, not the government. "But the children" is being used here to control what media children have access to, and that is dangerous. Texas is one of the states where they are banning books and education programs to ensure their children aren't exposed to outside views. Now they are coming for their access to information via the internet.
Thankfully, kids are smart. It isn't hard to get around these things. But that isn't the point -- the US government shouldn't be dictating what information people, even children, have access to.
I expect the government to stay the f**k out of our parenting. I'm afraid we would be scofflaw parents in this case and wouldn't restrict access to much of anything. Our kids could go to the library and look at any book or magazine they wanted to, just like I did when I was young. Somehow the world didn't crash.
Look at your own lives: I daresay the vast majority of us have matured reasonably well without the government restrictions on the minutiae of our behavior.