The Supreme Court on Monday declined to block a Texas law requiring age verification for app store downloads, allowing the law to take effect while litigation continues. If Texas’s law ultimately survives, it could set an important precedent for other states seeking to protect children online.
The case was brought by Students Engaged in Advancing Texas and the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which sought to stop Texas’s Senate Bill 2420, also known as the App Store Accountability Act. The law requires app stores to verify users’ ages and obtain parental permission before minors can download apps or make in-app purchases.
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In a brief order, the Supreme Court declined to intervene for now, leaving in place a 5th Circuit decision that allowed the law to take effect while the case proceeds. Opponents argue that the measure violates the First Amendment by restricting minors’ access to lawful speech and forcing app stores and developers to police access to protected content.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) has defended the law as a modern version of long-standing age restrictions on alcohol, tobacco, and other products deemed inappropriate for children. In court filings, Paxton’s office argued that the law is meant “to protect parents’ ability to make decisions concerning their children’s upbringing in the modern world.”
As a practical matter, the law requires app stores, including Apple’s App Store and Google Play, to determine whether a new user is under 18. If so, the minor’s account must be connected to a parent or guardian’s account before the child can download apps or complete in-app purchases. Adults and minors alike must have their ages verified before using the app store.
Texas is not alone. Louisiana and Utah have passed similar app-store age-verification laws, though both states have delayed implementation until 2027. California has also adopted its own digital age-assurance law, though it relies more heavily on self-declared age categories than the Texas approach.
The larger point is that Texas’s law is not a radical departure. Across the country, states are trying to restore parental authority over children’s online lives. Abroad, Australia and the United Kingdom are moving in the same direction, considering or implementing restrictions aimed at social media platforms and other online services used by minors.
Now that the Supreme Court has declined to block the law, Texas has a real chance to defend it successfully. The strongest argument for the law is that it does not exist to silence children. It exists to empower parents. The state is not deciding which apps children may use; it is requiring app stores to give parents a meaningful role before minors are exposed to products, services, and strangers online.
What distinguishes the Texas law from some other proposals is that it attempts to balance child safety with data privacy. The law allows app developers to rely on the app store’s age-verification system rather than forcing every developer to build its own. It also limits how long age-verification data may be retained, reducing the risk that sensitive information about children and families will be stored indefinitely.
That matters. Any law requiring proof of age must take data security seriously. If the government is going to require users to verify their ages, whether through identification, facial scan, payment credentials, or another method, it must also require strong protections for that data. Parents should not have to trade one danger for another by protecting their children from online harms only to expose their families to unnecessary privacy risks.
But as important as data privacy is, the deeper issue is childhood itself. Children are increasingly being raised not by parents, teachers, churches, neighborhoods, or extended families, but by screens, algorithms, influencers, chatbots, and strangers. ChatGPT and Google are no more qualified to teach children life lessons than the government is, and most parents are already wary of the government taking over that role.
That is why the culture is moving faster than the law. Jonathan Haidt and his After Babel project have helped focus public attention on the harms of phone-based childhoods. Other organizations, including the Family Online Safety Institute, study how children’s mental, physical, and social health is affected by life online. At the family level, many parents are already choosing stricter limits, delaying smartphones, banning screens from bedrooms, or removing them from the home altogether.
The law is finally trying to catch up. Parents should not need a law to tell them that children should not have unrestricted access to every corner of the internet. But parents should also not be forced to fight the largest technology companies in the world alone.
Texas’s App Store Accountability Act is not a complete solution. No single statute can restore childhood, rebuild parental authority, or solve the mental health crisis among young people. But it is a serious attempt to put parents back in charge of their children’s digital lives.
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That is the right direction. The online world was built by adults, for adults, and too often monetized at children’s expense. If app stores can verify payment information, collect commissions, enforce terms of service, and remove apps that violate their policies, they can also help parents know what their children are downloading.
Texas has offered one model for how to regulate online spaces without handing the government control over children’s speech. It protects parental authority, respects privacy concerns, and recognizes that childhood deserves more than unrestricted access to an app store. Other states should be watching closely.