Utah lawmakers advanced a bill Tuesday afternoon proponents say will protect kids from the harms of social media.
SB142 would require app store providers — namely Apple and Google — to verify the age of each user who downloads apps and would require parents to give consent for a minor to download a new app to their phone.
It’s the difference between asking a grocery store clerk — in this analogy, the app store — to check IDs before selling beer or tobacco to customers than requiring Budweiser or Marlboro to card individual buyers, said several supporters of the bill, including sponsor Sen. Todd Weiler.
“You’d never let your child enter into a legally binding contract,” Weiler, R-Woods Cross, told his colleagues during a committee hearing Tuesday. But in letting kids download apps, all of which require users to agree to terms and conditions, “parents are doing that every day,” he added.
But some lobbyists said they were concerned it just gives more data to already-exploitative tech companies.
Age verification requirements conflict with data privacy best practices and create new avenues for fraud, said Ruthe Barko, executive director of tech think tank TechNet. “With this bill’s requirements, every Utah resident, including parents and guardians, must submit more sensitive personal identification information online.”
Kouri Marshall, a regional director of government relations for Chamber of Progress, a tech advocacy group, compared the bill’s proposed restrictions to a gated community. He is concerned about children’s safety as a father and a policy director but thinks app developers are more equipped to handle such a sensitive thing as age verification.
“[The bill] treats app stores like gated communities and developers like residents,” he said. “I’d rather make the decision on who can enter my home than have a gatekeeper decide that for me.”
Parents and several teenagers who testified Tuesday were largely supportive of the bill and said it eased the burden, if only slightly, on parents who monitor their kids’ smartphone use.
Fifteen-year-old Sofie Willardson said her parents are “constantly” looking at her phone “trying to check for different things to make sure that I am having a safe and good life.” SB142 would “take one more thing off of their plates” and give them a little extra assurance that she was using her phone safely, Willardson said.
Rebecca Jordan, 17, said she got her first phone as a 14-year-old, and such early and frequent exposure to social media was “harmful to the way I saw myself and the world.”
“I had some really bad experiences with apps,” Jordan said. “I definitely lied about my age with some of them and I had some unideal situations with social media that were not overseen by my parents. ... I urge your support.”
The bill passed unanimously out of the Senate Transportation, Public Utilities, Energy, and Technology Committee Tuesday afternoon and will next be heard by the full Senate.
