- Tuesday, July 01, 2025
Users aged below 18 will need parental consent before they can download apps or make in-app purchases. Texas is the second state, after Utah, to pass such a law
By: India Weekly
IN A move to regulate smartphone use by children and teenagers, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has signed an online child safety bill requiring Apple and Alphabet’s Google to verify the age of users of their app stores.
Under the new law, users aged below 18 will need parental consent before they can download apps or make in-app purchases. The bill was opposed by Google and Apple.
Utah was the first US state to pass a similar law earlier this year, and U.S. lawmakers have also introduced a federal bill.
Another Texas bill, passed in the second-most-populous state’s House of Representatives and awaiting a Senate vote, would restrict social media apps to users over 18.
Across the US, age limits and parental consent for social media apps has a wide consensus.
A Pew Research poll in 2023 found that 81 per cent of Americans favor parental consent for children to create social media accounts, and 71 per cent support age verification before using social media.
The effect of social media on children’s mental health has become a growing global concern, with Australia banning social media for children under 16, and other countries such as Norway also considering new rules.
How to implement age restrictions has caused a conflict between Meta, the owner of Instagram and Facebook, and Apple and Google, which own the two dominant app stores.
Meta, along with social media companies Snap and X, applauded the passage of the bill.
“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. The app store is the best place for it,” the companies said.
“We believe there are better proposals that help keep kids safe without requiring millions of people to turn over their personal information,” an Apple spokesperson said in a statement on Tuesday (27).
Kathleen Farley, vice president of litigation for the Chamber of Progress, a group backed by Apple and Alphabet, said the Texas law is likely to face legal challenges on First Amendment grounds.
“A big path for challenge is that it burdens adult speech in attempting to regulate children’s speech,” Farley told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.
“I would say there are arguments that this is a content-based regulation singling out digital communication.”
Child online safety groups that backed the Texas bill have also long argued for app store age verification, saying it is the only way to give parents effective control over children’s use of technology.
At the federal level, US lawmakers have moved the Kids Online Safety Act, known as KOSA, which would require social media companies to make design choices that prevent and mitigate harms to young users.
KOSA was passed by the US Senate last year but stalled in the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of the US Congress.
