Earlier this year, juries in California and New Mexico returned significant verdicts against Meta for harms inflicted on children through its platforms. Within hours, some supporters of the App Store Accountability Act (ASAA) seized on the verdicts as proof that legislatures must enact the bill. The irony is breathtaking: Meta has spent millions lobbying for this very bill in more than half of U.S. state legislatures and Congress precisely to avoid paying judgments like the ones recently handed down.

France passed a landmark law on Tuesday restricting access to social media for anyone under 15, the first European country to do so, and the latest in a wave of countries acting against what they view as malign effects of such services on minors.

Imagine if every website had its own border crossing. Some would ask to see your passport before you entered. Others might simply ask you to confirm your age, while some wouldn’t stop you at all. Which checks you encounter depend not only on the service you’re using, but also on the country you’re logging in from. This approach is already shaping our experiences online.

Have you ever had to show a physical identification (ID) card when purchasing movie tickets or certain over-the-counter medications? When entering a nightclub, has security given you a quick glance to guess your age? While browsing the internet, ever clicked on a button to state you’re old enough to enter a website?

If you have spent any time online, you have probably been asked at some point to enter your age into a website to access it. Whether you’re entering your birthdate on a dating website or affirming that you are over 13 to make a social media account, some online experiences have always depended on users stating that they were of an appropriate age to access certain services.

President Donald Trump met Monday at the White House with Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and Marsha Blackburn to discuss tech policy. The huddle came ahead of a highly-anticipated Senate Commerce Committee markup to take place as soon as next week on a roster of kids’ online safety and artificial intelligence bills.

The California legislature has stepped back from a plan that would have expanded its age-gating law, removing language that could have compounded serious threats to users’ speech, privacy and security just to browse the internet. A.B. 1856, authored by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, will now move forward through the legislature without its most problematic pieces.

Canada's federal government has proposed banning everyone under 16 from social media — but legal experts say the bill's most significant privacy impact falls on tens of millions of Canadian adults who never consented to handing their identity documents to a third-party verification company. Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, is now at second reading in the House of Commons as Parliament sits in summer recess, with debate set to resume in September.

Rumors suggest Congress may revive the App Store Freedom Act, mandating dominant app marketplaces like Apple and Google allow third-party app stores and sideloading. Critics argue this legislation is anti-consumer and dangerous, highlighting the increasing sophistication of scammers who now employ AI for tactics like voice cloning to bypass security.