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1 1 (August 17, 2023)

handle is hein.crs/govemoc0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Congressional_______ SaResearch Service Online Age Verification (Part I): Current Context August 17, 2023 For almost as long as the internet has existed, journalists and lawmakers have sounded alarms over children's ability to access harmful material online. The targeted material has expanded over the years, with pornography being a primary focus in the 1990s and social media content receiving attention in the 2020s. One legislative response that has been particularly popular over the decades involves enacting laws that require or encourage website operators to ascertain the ages of their websites' users before letting them access content. Some Members of the 118th Congress have introduced bills requiring or encouraging age verification in certain contexts, and several states have passed laws mandating that some website operators take various steps to learn the ages of their users. As discussed in this CRS Insight, determining an individual's age online can present practical difficulties. This three-part Legal Sidebar discusses constitutional concerns with requiring age verification procedures through legislation, using recently enacted state age verification laws and several introduced federal bills as examples. Part I provides an overview of the current online age verification landscape by describing the provisions of enacted state laws and proposed federal laws. Part II provides an overview of the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment and its historic relationship to online age verification legislation. Part III discusses concerns with age verification laws posed by the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. Overview of Age Verification Laws Laws requiring age verification have been proposed throughout the internet's lifetime, though the approach has seen renewed interest in the past several years. Following reports of social media's negative impact on teens' mental health, many states introduced legislation aimed at social media specifically. States may also have taken cues from the United Kingdom, which implemented its Age-Appropriate Design Code for online services-also known as the Children's Code-in 2020. California enacted a similar piece of legislation, the California Age-Appropriate Design Code (CAADC), in 2022. Age Verification Terminology While the goal of many pieces of proposed and enacted legislation is similar-to ensure that users of particular online services are above a certain age-the language used varies. The CAADC uses the phrase Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov LSB11020 CRS Legal Sidebar Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress

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