A Cure Worse Than the Scroll
The App Store Accountability Act (ASAA) promises to protect children online—but it would do so by imposing sweeping mandates on everyone else.
Panic over doomscrolling, brainrot, gambling, pornography, online predators, and minors’ interactions with AI chatbots has fueled a familiar policy response: calls to age-gate the internet, social media, and apps.
The ASAA fits squarely in that trend. The bill has cleared the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee and now heads to the full House for consideration. It mirrors several state-level proposals. The ASAA would require Google Play and Apple’s App Store to verify the age of all users using “commercially reasonable methods,” and would bar minors unless they have parental consent.
Some of this will sound uncontroversial. Lawmakers have long required age verification to buy cigarettes or alcohol, or to enter casinos and strip clubs. More than 20 states now impose similar requirements on pornographic websites. Few object, in principle, to reasonable safeguards that protect minors from harmful or inappropriate content.
The ASAA goes much further.
It would expose all app-store users to new privacy and security risks, while saddling even developers of age-appropriate content with compliance burdens. The likely result: less competition and less innovation in the app economy. At the same time, the bill would do little to empower parents or meaningfully improve protections for children.
Put simply, the costs outweigh the benefits.