Online Age Verification Laws Are a Bet Worth Making
March 1, 2024
Seven states adopted legislation last year to require age verification proving that a user is 18 to gain access to pornography sites. In 2024, by some counts, as many as a dozen additional states are considering bills of their own. If successful, this trend would erect a multi-state barrier between children and pornography platforms, a strong position which could potentially support efforts to enact federal legislation as well.
This kind of legislation has broad support among the general public, which recognizes that the state routinely age verifies kids to block them from consuming things that we deem inappropriate for them. But this simple logic is not shared by powerful entrenched interests which seemingly can bear no amount of regulatory protection for kids online. As lobbyists converge on the U.S. Capitol to protect the right of Big Tech to addict and advertise to children—according to one study, there is one social media lobbyist in Washington per every four members of Congress—they are also flooding the states in an effort to sweep away laws designed to give kids more freedom from pornography and social media sites.
