Most US adults support laws putting age restrictions on social media

Laws putting age limits on social media are being introduced in countries around the world, driven by pressure from parents concerned about what hours of daily screen time is doing to their kids. In the U.S., state-level legislation has repeatedly run into the wall of the First Amendment – and the argument, peddled by legal lobby NetChoice, that parents want to be the ultimate authority when it comes to what their kids can and can’t do online. Good old American freedom, the thinking goes, means keeping the government out of online safety choices.

New data from Pew Research puts the lie to that idea, showing that nearly six-in-ten U.S. adults support banning anyone under the age of 16 from using social media sites.

By numbers, 85 percent of adults say they would support social media companies requiring parental consent for minors to create a social media account, 78 percent support requiring people to verify their age before using these platforms, and 78 percent support limits on how much time minors spend on social media. All of those numbers have risen since a similar survey in 2023.

Unsurprisingly, “parents of a child under 18 are more likely than those without a child under 18 to support banning those under 16 from using social media.” Somewhat more remarkable for the politically polarized U.S. is that the issue transcends left and right, finding support from both Democrats and Republicans.

Restrictions are less popular with young people; “young adults are less likely than older Americans to support social media policies aimed at minors.”

Nonetheless, the idea that regulating social media with age minimums stomps all over Americans’ freedom is an illusion conjured by Big Tech to push back against laws it finds inconvenient.

Data security matters, but surveillance fears are overripe

A more legitimate concern is to be found in the worry about data breaches. Commentary in TechTimes notes that Louisiana has reset its law requiring app stores to implement age assurance requirements: “on May 15, Gov. Jeff Landry signed HB 977, a replacement measure that repeals the original App Store Accountability Act and resets its enforcement clock to July 1, 2027.”

The piece claims that “the national delay-and-refile pattern now makes clear is that the central question in this debate has never been whether parents can protect their children – it is whether the only practical mechanism to do so requires every adult in America to submit a government ID to a third-party company that has already been breached twice.”

As evidence of the danger, the piece points to a June 2024 breach that affected Israeli identity verification company Au10tix. The company, it says, “left administrative credentials exposed online for more than 18 months.”

“The credentials, first compromised in December 2022 and posted to a public Telegram channel in March 2023, provided access to a logging platform containing users’ names, dates of birth, nationalities, identification numbers, and images of identity documents including driver’s licenses and passports. Au10tix initially denied the credentials still worked; security researchers confirmed they did.”

Likewise, it notes the September 2025 Discord breach. “Discord confirmed that approximately 70,000 users had government-issued ID photos exposed – photos submitted for age verification appeals routed through a general-purpose customer service platform.”

Data security is a going concern for age assurance providers, and the author might have built a valid argument on it. Instead, the piece pivots to the same tired, under-informed paranoid that  civil rights groups and Big Social alike have come to lean on: that age assurance is a tool for government control.

Quoting the perpetually vexed Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), it says “in the final analysis, age verification systems are surveillance systems.” Moreover, “the EFF’s observation is specifically about the data collection architecture, not a judgment about child safety goals.”

Except that, implicitly, it is. The article suggests that would-be invasive age assurance tools collect too much user data, and that good old fashioned self-declaration is being ignored because the industry has deemed it not “reasonably designed to ensure accuracy.”

“What remains as the practically deployable options are government ID upload, credit card confirmation, or facial age estimation via a selfie processed by a third-party biometric vendor.”

These, apparently, are incompatible with freedom as defined by the U.S. constitution.

Big Social takes position Big Porn can’t

The age assurance debate is in global headlines because of social media. No one outside of smut peddlers was much upset by laws imposing age verification requirements on pornography streaming sites; civil rights groups don’t love them, but it’s hard to stand up in defense of Big Porn and be taken seriously.

Social media companies have spent billions in lobbying to try and convince the world that performing a facial scan or creating an anonymized age credential through a third party biometric vendor is a gross violation of privacy. The same companies have built empires on collecting and sharing user data, with consent consisting of clicking a box at the bottom of 30-pages of terms and conditions.

In its latest screed against online age assurance laws, NetChoice celebrates its legal win in Nebraska, where a judge has granted its request for a preliminary injunction of the state’s age assurance law, halting enforcement of the age verification and parental consent provisions that were set to take effect on July 1.

“As this decision illustrates, the chorus against digital ID mandates grows louder every day,” says Paul Taske, Director of the NetChoice Litigation Center, on the lobby group’s website.  “There is no constitutional justification for the government to block access to fully protected speech. This is a win for every Nebraskan who values their right to speak and read online without first handing the government a digital ID.”

Clearly, however, it is not the win NetChoice wants us to believe, given strong public support for age restrictions on social platforms.

CCIA comes at California social media law

Regardless, the legislation will continue until morale improves, so to speak – as will the pushback. California’s law SB 976, the “Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act,” faces a legal challenge from the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), which is also suing Texas over its app store age assurance law.

The CCIA is Big Tech in a different costume: Google, Amazon, Apple and Meta are all members. So, when its representatives say, “CCIA believes children deserve greater security and privacy online,” but argues that “overly restrictive regulations that mandate age verification create new privacy risks without meaningfully improving safety,” it can reasonably be assumed that the first statement is an outright fabrication.

The crack in Big Social’s reasoning may be starting to show. By framing their argument in terms of the First Amendment and opposing censorship, companies promote the idea that their social platforms are “the new public square” – a place for the free exchange of ideas. That conveniently skirts the fact that these are private, commercial enterprises, and that that their relationship with their users is a commercial one. Recent developments have seen some jurisdictions look to consumer protection law as a way forward for regulations.

Regardless, it should be noted that the most efficient way to improve kids’ privacy and security online would be to force Meta, X and other big social platforms to shut down and to outlaw their business model.

Age assurance for porn comes to Iowa

The question of age verification for access to online pornography is almost a footnote at this stage of the cultural conversation. But while the legislative momentum has shifted to social media, some places are still working to put protections on explicit adult content online – and facing the same rehashed objections.

According to the Des Moines Register, as of July 1, 2026, users in Iowa must prove their age before accessing online pornography, as per House File 846. The expectation is that Pornhub will opt out of the law by shutting off access for Iowans.

“The law says verify ages. It does not dictate how a company complies, and Pornhub’s owner Aylo has consistently picked a third door: it leaves,” says an editorial in Gizmodo. “RedTube, YouPorn, and Tube8 sit under the same corporate roof and have exited in lockstep each time. Aylo sites are already dark across roughly two dozen states and France, in the UK for new users since February, and in Australia since March.”

Contradiction in ‘don’t attach my identity to social media’

The piece – which also serves as an advertisement for NordVPN – suggests the interesting part of Iowa’s law “isn’t how to get past it. It’s what the law quietly asks you to hand over in the first place.”

“Most adults who walk away from these sites after a law like this aren’t offended by proving they’re grown,” it says. “They’re wary of what the proof requires. To clear any site-level check, you give a photo of your license or your card details to a third-party verifier whose only function is processing these checks for porn sites. That creates a record tying your name to adult content, held by a company you never chose.”

That claim is debatable. Most age assurance operators working in good faith do everything they can to eliminate, or discard as soon as possible, any connection between a user and the site they are accessing. Double-blind tokenization, deployed in France, is a relevant example of technology that aims to sustain anonymity in online age checks.

The basic premise, however, is correct – and illustrative of why social media’s argument is much thinner than NetChoice suggests. People object to age checks for porn because it is taboo; workplace meetings might get awkward if a colleague were to mention your pegging fetish. Interactions with online porn are inherently clandestine.

The point of social media, on the other hand, is to showcase oneself, share thoughts, bark at others, and generally build a personal brand. It is inherently demonstrative. Shame is the engine that makes people wary of age verification for porn – but most people who actively post on social media want others to know it. As such, the idea that age checks for social media force users to associate their identities with content they’d rather not be linked to simply does not apply. For many, social media is identity.

The issue will continue to evolve in the U.S.: this week, U.S. lawmakers approved a sweeping children’s online safety package, the Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act (KIDS Act), which  would impose new obligations on social media platforms, adult content sites, online game providers, AI chatbot companies, data brokers, and others that collect or use minors’ information.

Article Topics

age verification  |  California  |  Computer & Communications Industry Association  |  Iowa  |  Louisiana  |  Netchoice  |  social media  |  United States