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Committee hears App Store Accountability Act to require parental approval at store level
Summary
Representative Melanie Miller presented House Bill 226, the App Store Accountability Act, proposing age verification and parental approval for app-store downloads for minors; sponsors cited parental polling and similar recent state laws; committee members asked about constitutional and interstate-commerce issues and enforcement fines.
Representative Melanie Miller told the Ohio House Judiciary Committee that House Bill 226, the App Store Accountability Act, would require app stores to verify a parent or guardian and a child’s age once at the store-account level and require parental approval for downloads by minors.
Miller said the proposal shifts age verification “to the app store level” to protect children from harmful content, enhance data privacy, and make parental approval simpler than requiring app-by-app consent. She said parents would confirm their identity once in the store account (for example with an ID or credit card) and receive notifications to approve or deny downloads on their own device.
Miller said the substitute language draws on recently enacted provisions in other states, including Utah, and cited polling by the Terrence Group indicating broad parental support in Ohio for a single place to provide approval: “A full 80% of parent voters support a law requiring app stores to obtain parental approval for children to download apps,” she said.
Committee members raised multiple technical and legal questions. Representative Isaacson asked about the urgency and evidence of harms to children; Miller cited school-district pilots and national technology-summit discussions and said children can bypass age gates by falsifying birthdates. Representative Timbs asked how the proposal would operate when children cross state lines, noting potential interstate-commerce limits; Miller said technical details and interstate operation would be addressed with expert testimony from technology stakeholders later in the process. Representative Mohammed asked about enforcement and the $2,500-per-violation civil penalty the bill would authorize the state attorney general to seek; Miller said the dollar figure drew on other states’ proposals.
Other lawmakers questioned whether existing parental-control tools already provided similar protections and whether the bill would impose additional burdens on businesses and app developers. Miller said many app stores already have features like “Ask to Buy,” and that the bill would expand and standardize parental verification at the store level to close loopholes.
Miller said the substitute draws language from Utah’s recently enacted law and from proposals introduced in several other states; she invited tech and legal experts to provide additional detail at future hearings. The committee concluded the bill’s first hearing and did not take a committee vote at that time.
