Lawmakers in Washington are once again pushing to overhaul how young people access the internet. This time, the proposal gaining momentum would place the responsibility for age verification not on individual apps or websites, but on the app stores themselves.

The plan, now moving through Congress as the App Store Accountability Act (ASA), would require app stores run by Apple, Google, and others to verify user ages at the device level, then relay that information to developers when an app is downloaded. It marks a significant shift in the nationwide debate over kids’ online safety, reflecting a model already adopted in states like Utah and California.

Pinterest revealed on Monday that it is endorsing the federal bill, aligning itself with Meta, Snap, and X, which supported the proposal when it was first introduced.

“Making the app store a one-stop shop for age verification ensures children are protected from the moment they start using a device,” CEO Bill Ready said. “We urge Congress to pass this important law.”

The ASA will be examined Tuesday during a hearing on a broad kids’ online safety package, which also includes a newly revised version of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). Although KOSA has long dominated the federal conversation, the ASA represents a more targeted approach that has already resonated in both Republican and Democratic states.

Under the ASA, app stores would verify ages, require parental consent for minors, and link children’s accounts to guardians. App age ratings would also be clearly displayed. Supporters say the measure mirrors how brick-and-mortar stores check ID before selling restricted products.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), one of the bill’s primary sponsors, said via X that Big Tech has “profited from leading kids to inappropriate and dangerous content through app stores,” framing the ASA as a commonsense guardrail.

For Meta and other platforms, shifting the burden to app stores would ease compliance pressure. Instead of managing hundreds of millions of individual age checks, they could rely on a single verification layer applied before a user ever downloads an app.

The approach is also being adopted abroad. The United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act began requiring broad youth age checks this summer, resulting in security fears and widespread workarounds. U.S. lawmakers argue that centralizing verification within app stores could streamline that process and reduce exposure of sensitive data compared with repeated ID scans across multiple platforms.

Despite traction at the state level, age verification laws are already facing lawsuits. Texas’ version of the ASA-inspired model is under legal challenge from the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), which argues that requiring age checks to access broad swaths of legal content violates the First Amendment.

While the Supreme Court has upheld age checks for pornographic websites, age-gating the entire app ecosystem raises new constitutional questions. Still, Lee says he’s confident the ASA will withstand scrutiny and sees no reason to delay federal action, even as litigation moves forward in Texas.

The ASA has created an unusual set of alliances. Social platforms like Meta, X, and Snapchat argue that app stores are the logical place for age verification because they already collect age data and control app distribution. A coalition formed this week, including Meta, Spotify, and Match, further emphasized support for the app store model.

Apple and Google, however, remain skeptical. Both companies argue that sharing user age information with developers creates new privacy risks and that app makers should instead handle verification within their own services. Apple has also been cautious about federal mandates that require broad data sharing.

Even so, state-level action is creating pressure. California’s new Digital Age Assurance Act requires operating systems to prompt users for their date of birth and pass general age-range signals to developers. The law’s narrower enforcement scope helped secure Google’s endorsement — though Apple has not followed suit.

“The need for a federal standard is urgent,” Pinterest’s Ready wrote in a letter to lawmakers. Without one, companies face a growing patchwork of state requirements that could become impractical as more jurisdictions adopt conflicting rules.

The ASA reflects a broader reality: lawmakers in both parties are now moving rapidly toward high-level identity systems as a condition of online access for minors. Whether those systems sit within app stores or inside the device itself remains a matter of political and technological debate, but the trend points toward an increasingly centralized age enforcement across digital platforms.

How Congress balances privacy, First Amendment concerns, and child safety in the coming months may ultimately shape the architecture of the American internet for years to come.

The bill’s sponsors believe momentum is finally on their side. As Lee put it, “App stores need reliable age verification, parental controls, and safeguards against exploitation demanded by concerned parents across America.”

Will this nationwide age verification bill pass and become law? It’s hard to say, but it’s a very real possibility.