Age-verification laws often create a false sense of security that tech-savvy teens often bypass. If we want to keep kids safe online, lawmakers must pivot to tools that empower parents without age-gating the internet for everyone.
A proposed set of federal and state laws, known as the App Store Accountability Act, would mandate age verification for all app store users who download apps or make in-app purchases. Proponents say it’s a necessary shield against online harms, but critics argue it erects a digital tollbooth on free expression, forcing every citizen to surrender personal data just to browse software.
Although some supporters might want to frame the App Store Accountability Act like a physical retail store — routine in-store ID checks for alcohol and tobacco — this is more like checking the IDs of everyone who wants to enter the store. Checking an ID at a register works because a physical clerk can look you in the eye. Digital app stores, by contrast, cannot tell a 14-year-old from a 40-year-old without demanding invasive credentials from everyone.
Such proposals are currently sweeping through several states like Texas, Utah, Louisiana, Alabama, and California, alongside stalled federal proposals. At the same time, this legislation is facing fierce First Amendment legal battles in federal courts, which has triggered a fundamental constitutional clash between child safety and digital privacy.
There are plenty of flaws with the proposal. The risk of creating a false image of absolute online safety for children is one of the most dangerous. Laws like this could sell parents a comforting fiction that digital spaces can be childproofed and safe through administrative control. Parents must parent. Outsourcing parenting to the state is a bad idea.
Gen Z and Alpha — the very generations these laws are targeting — are far too tech-savvy for such measures. They can easily bypass these kinds of systems. Take physical age restrictions, like checking IDs for alcohol or tobacco at a grocery store: in practice, resourceful teens routinely bypass those barriers, such as by getting an older sibling or friend to buy things for them.
Young people have grown up with technology and bypassing digital friction. Minors would treat this regulation as another puzzle to solve. Kids would simply turn to Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), log into an older sibling's credentials, or even create a secondary family account. Even under the best of intentions, administrative walls do not stop ingenuity. They just change the route.
We have already seen this dynamic play out globally. In Australia, recent social media bans for minors ran into a brick wall of technical workarounds. Within days, teenagers simply turned to VPNs to spoof their geographical locations, rerouted the traffic to jurisdictions without such laws, or even swapped accounts with older peers. Something similar happened in Britain, whose Online Safety Act faced criticism when government research found one in four children use VPNs. After all, this is the same generation that figured out how to route traffic through foreign servers just to dodge YouTube ads.
True protection of kids online requires shifting away from unworkable gatekeeping and toward practical solutions that empower parents directly. Instead of building digital tollbooths, lawmakers and regulators need to prioritize narrowly tailored, targeted safety rules. The focus should be on precise and practical tools that truly protect minors without offering a false sense of security that leaves both parents and children more vulnerable, or setting up barriers that are easily bypassed.
A great example is Apple’s built-in device-level controls, which allow parents to directly manage restrictions at the device level, rather than forcing app stores or websites to harvest biometric data or IDs from every adult user.
The state can never parent kids as well as parents can — and it shouldn’t try. True safety for minors does not come from treating every citizen like a suspect. Instead, it should come from open communication, digital literacy, and specific tools protecting the next generation without dismantling the online security and rights of everyone else.
Bojan Lazarevski is a political scientist in international and intercultural studies based in North Macedonia. Bojan is also a writer with Young Voices and an activist and researcher. He writes for the Brussels Times, bne IntelliNews, Hércules Diario, Gript, the EU Reporter, and many other outlets.