As the mother of seven children, I know how hard it is to protect my kids in the digital world. Even the most informed parents are desperate for solutions to empower them to take back control from Big Tech.
That is why I support House Bill 161, the App Store Accountability Act, by Representative Chris Sells, which would require app stores to first get parental approval before Alabama minors can download apps.
House Bill 161 puts families first and prevents trillion-dollar companies from being able to exploit our children in a constitutional manner without jeopardizing anyone’s privacy or First Amendment rights.
House Bill 161 puts parents back in charge and has overwhelming support from Alabama parents and voters. The Alabama Policy Institute conducted a statewide poll and found that 83% of Alabama parents support this bill.
Even better, House Bill 161 has broad bipartisan support: 89% of Republicans and 75% of Democrats and Independent voters in Alabama support the App Store Accountability Act.
House Bill 161 will protect our children by focusing on three main gaps in tools available to parents today to keep their kids safe online.
First, it restores parental oversight by restricting trillion-dollar app stores from allowing underage children to agree to sweeping terms of service and contracts without parental approval.
Currently, children can agree to terms of service that allow sweeping access to kids’ data, including their location, microphone, camera, and so much more. This is absurd. Nowhere else in the real world do we allow children to enter contracts without parental oversight.
Children can’t even sign their field trip permission forms.
Second, it requires app stores to display more accurate age ratings for the apps they offer in their stores.
Unlike video games or movies, there is no independent organization to oversee ratings to ensure consistent and accurate risk disclosures. Parents deserve truthful and transparent app age ratings.
Finally, this bill requires the app stores to verify whether a user is an adult or a minor.
Despite what the opposition – Big Tech companies – will say, this bill DOES NOT require anyone to upload their ID or birth certificate. Instead, HB 161 will simply require app stores to use the information they largely already have – like the credit card in our digital wallet – to determine whether a user is an adult or minor.
If they are a minor, they will then need to be connected to a parent’s account to approve app downloads. This will NOT require app stores to collect any new information.
Opponents of House Bill 161 will say that this bill jeopardizes privacy or that app stores cannot do this.
However, Apple and Google have both recently released tools to comply with this same law that’s already passed in other states. All these app stores have to do is ensure these tools are accessible in Alabama and allow parents to parent in the digital age.
The opposition has gone so far as to introduce a competing bill, House Bill 219, which fails to provide any meaningful protection for Alabama children, and instead aims to protect the profits of Apple and Google.
Last session, the App Store Accountability Act passed unanimously out of the Alabama Senate, and has already unanimously passed out of committee in the House this session.
This session, I urge the Alabama legislature to continue the strong momentum from last year, listen to 83% of Alabama parents who want this, and pass House Bill 161, the App Store Accountability Act.
Stephanie Smith is the President and CEO of the Alabama Policy Institute.
