Ohio committee hears competing app-age bills; tech firms, advocates and law-enforcement testify

The Senate Financial Institutions, Insurance and Technology Committee heard extended sponsor and proponent testimony on two competing approaches to online age verification and parental controls.

SB167 (described in testimony as the App Store Accountability Act) would require app stores to verify age and obtain parental permission when a teen attempts to download an app, placing a centralized verification and consent flow at the App Store level so parents link their accounts once and do not repeatedly provide sensitive information to dozens of apps. Jennifer Hanley, head of safety policy for North America at Meta, said the approach reduces data exposure and is privacy-protective because app stores would share only a secure age range or a parent-approved signal rather than raw identity documents. Hanley told the panel that partial or selective age verification on some surfaces would fail because teens could…