Age verification laws for social media accounts

For most of the internet's life, the only federal age rule for ordinary apps was COPPA, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. The Federal Trade Commission enforces it. COPPA applies to services that collect personal information from children under 13, and the FTC's own guidance says a general-audience app may use a 'neutral age screen,' meaning a birthday field that does not nudge you toward saying you are 13 or older. That is the birthday box most teenagers know.

COPPA says nothing about 14-, 15-, or 17-year-olds. It never required an ID. Our article on COPPA and under-13 accounts covers that law in detail. The point here is that above 13, until recently, federal law left the door open.

In Reno v. ACLU (1997), the Court struck down parts of a federal law that made it a crime to send 'indecent' material to minors online. The reasoning was that the law also blocked adults from speech the First Amendment protects, and the government had not shown a narrower way to shield children. For almost thirty years that case made courts suspicious of any online age gate.

Then came Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton (2025). Texas passed a law requiring websites where more than one-third of the content is sexual material harmful to minors to verify every visitor's age. The Court upheld it, 6 to 3, using a middle-level test called intermediate scrutiny. The majority said adults have no First Amendment right to avoid showing their age, and compared the requirement to showing an ID to buy alcohol. Paxton was about pornography sites, not social media. But states passing social media age laws now point to it, and the people challenging those laws point to Reno. Several state social media laws have been paused by lower courts while that fight continues. Which laws are in force changes month to month, so treat any list you find online as possibly out of date.