As a queer, brown teenager growing up in a conservative part of Texas, Sarah Philips, a campaigner for Fight for the Future, said the internet served as a place to find community. \u201cMost people I know with that experience looked to some sort of online connection when they didn\u2019t find it in-person,\u201d Philips reflected. Back in October, with Texas poised to restrict minors\u2019 access to social media and other apps in 2026, student organizers took the issue to court.<\/p>\n
Texas and federal lawmakers are seeking to expand online age verification requirements to limit minors\u2019 internet use, citing cyberbullying, harmful content, and criminal extortion risks. \u201cToday\u2019s youth are robbed of their innocence far more easily than ever before,\u201d Joel Thayer, president of the Digital Progress Institute, told the U.S. House<\/a> on Dec. 2.<\/p>\n The Texas App Store Accountability Act<\/a> (Senate Bill 2420), which was scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, required that all Texans verify their age when creating an account on app stores on platforms like Apple and Google, and mandated parent permission for every single app download and purchase made by a minor, with parents also needing to verify their age each time.<\/p>\n Per the bill, Apple, Google, Amazon, and other app software companies would be required to verify age using a \u201ccommercially reasonable method,\u201d such as uploading a picture of one\u2019s driver\u2019s license, and assign age ratings for every app and in-app purchase.<\/p>\n But as of last Tuesday, Dec. 23, the law is blocked from taking effect through a preliminary injunction. U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman ruled the act a likely violation of the First Amendment after hearing two conjoined lawsuits the previous week: one<\/a> brought by two high schoolers and the student advocacy group Students Engaged in Advancing Texas, and a second<\/a> by the Computer and Communications Industry Association.<\/p>\n \u201cYouth deserve that privacy \u2013 not only data privacy, but privacy from parents,\u201d Cameron Samuels, executive director of the plaintiff, SEAT, told the Chronicle before the decision was released. \u201cWe deserve to hold that agency and decision-making.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Act is akin to a law that would require every bookstore to verify the age of every customer at the door and, for minors, require parental consent before the child or teen could enter and again when they try to purchase a book,\u201d Pitman wrote in the order<\/a> against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the would-be enforcer of the act. Pitman also pointed to age verification requirements for websites containing \u201csexual material\u201d that already exist<\/a> in Texas.<\/p>\n The attorney general appealed<\/a> the decision the same day, seeking to overturn the injunction order blocking the act from taking effect.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cFor LGBTQ+ teens in particular, online communities are a huge resource if your family, or your household, or your religious community, or your school aren\u2019t affirming and accepting places for you.\u201d<\/p>\n Sarah philips, campaigner for fight for the future<\/p>\n \u201cWe built this bill to equip parents with common sense tools to protect their kids AND to survive court challenges by those who may have lesser priorities. We are committed to seeing it through,\u201d the bill\u2019s author, state Sen. Angela Paxton, wrote in a statement.<\/p>\n Amid lawmakers\u2019 claims that increased parent oversight would make the internet a safer place for children and teens, advocacy groups like Fight for the Future, the Genders and Sexualities Alliance Network, and SEAT argue that an expansion of existing age verification requirements to entire app stores poses a safety risk, especially for LGBTQ+ youth.<\/p>\n \u201cFor LGBTQ+ teens in particular, online communities are a huge resource if your family, or your household, or your religious community, or your school aren\u2019t affirming and accepting places for you,\u201d Philips said. \u201cOnline ID check laws functionally are creating a system where young people would be fenced off from those spaces.\u201d<\/p>\n Critics of online age verification requirements also argue that government or corporate collection of personal data, such as driver\u2019s licenses or AI-evaluated face scans, is a privacy and surveillance risk, pointing to a Discord data breach<\/a> in October in which 70,000 government IDs may have been leaked through a third-party company who used them to verify user\u2019s ages.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are so many social media outlets and generative AI services that people use as search engines now,\u201d said Kate Ruane, director of the Center for Democracy and Technology\u2019s Free Expression Project. \u201cImagine that service has been required to verify your age, has your government ID linked to your account, and that service experiences a data breach. \u2026 The most sensitive thing you have ever looked up [would] be linked to your identity.\u201d<\/p>\n