Relates to requiring manufacturers of internet-enabled devices to conduct age assurance to determine a user's age category

Showing the cosponsors who are on Agora, A to Z. The official record may list more.

• Democratic1

Shown in neutral colors by design; Agora is non-partisan.

◆ The sponsor's argument

Why Andrew Gounardes says this is needed

Concerns about digital well-being for underage users have grown exponen- tially in recent years, with a 2020 Pew Research survey showing that 81% of parents were worried about how much information advertisers could glean about their child's behavior, and 72% of parents worried about children's interaction with strangers online (Hogg, Luke, and Evan Swarztrauber. On the Internet, No One Knows You're a Dog Examining the Feasibility of Privacy- Preserving Age Verification Online. 2025.). A 2023 Mott Children's Hospital poll showed that overuse of devices, social media, and Internet safety were the top three concerns for parents, and American teens are currently spending the equivalent of a 40-hour workweek, or 8.5 hours a day, on social media, gaming, and messaging and texting apps alone (Rosenberg, David. "Teens Are Spending the Equivalent of a 40-Hour Work Week on Their Devices. Here's How to Help Them Find the Right Balance." Fortune Well, 24 Oct. 2023, fortune.com/wel1/2023/10/24/teens-too-much-screen-time-find-balance/) States and nations have passed a laundry list of laws in recent years endeavoring to protect minors online, such as those restricting access to mobile sports betting or laws requiring apps to curb particularly dangerous or addictive features for users under the age of 18. All of these efforts are contingent, however, upon the deployer of the app or product being able to reasonably ascertain the age of the user, so that they know whether or not they should be treated as a minor under the law. This is why, over the last few years, at least 19 US states have imple- mented age assurance mandates, along with several European countries, where implementation of such laws has already begun (Hogg, Luke, and Evan Swarztrauber. On the Internet, No One Knows You're a Dog Examining the Feasibility of Privacy- Preserving Age Verification Online. 2025). Age assurance is already the law of the land for social media apps with algorithmic feeds under Article 45 of GBL, the Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act, in New York State. Assumptions that the only way to identify the age of a user online is by requiring a government ID are outdated, as many other methods of age assurance have developed since the early days of the Internet. While opponents of age assurance claim that there is no method to ascertain a user's age that does not compromise security and privacy, this argument ignores the advancement of zero-knowledge proof methods in recent years, which allow a user to verify one fact about themself without giving up any other personally identifying information (P11) (Hogg, Luke, and Evan Swarztrauber. On the Internet, No One Knows You're a Dog Examining the Feasibility of Privacy- Preserving Age Verification Online. 2025.). Device-based storage systems, such as a digital wallet that enables a user to store identity credentials to verify age, can be locally stored on a device, encrypted, and used to provide data to a third party with- out disclosing any other P11, minimizing the risk of exposure as the age verification cannot be tied to broader online activity to create a profile (Hogg, Luke, and Evan Swarztrauber. On the Internet, No One Knows You're a Dog Examining the Feasibility of Privacy- Preserving Age Verification Online. 2025.). Similarly, double-blind systems, where the receiving platform does not receive any information about the user and the age data provider does not receive any information about the platform, minimize the sharing of PI I while also reducing the risk of identity theft and data breaches. Double-blind systems are so successful in preserving and advancing user privacy, in fact, that Arcom, the French administrative agency in charge of enforcing their age assurance law for mature adult websites, has already mandated that the providers of such websites offer at least one double-blind option to users (Hogg, Luke, and Evan Swarztrauber. On the Internet, No One Knows You're a Dog Examini

This is the sponsor's own case for the bill, quoted from their memorandum. It is not Agora's description of what the bill does.