App store age verification laws

An app store age law tells the store, and often the developer, to sort users by age and to get a parent's consent before a minor downloads an app or makes a purchase inside it. The store is the door. The app is what sits behind the door. That is different from a chatbot law, which follows the conversation after the app is open, and different from COPPA, which is a federal privacy rule for children under 13.

Texas Senate Bill 2420, the App Store Accountability Act, was written to take effect January 1, 2026. A federal district court preliminarily enjoined it in December 2025. The Fifth Circuit stayed that injunction, and on July 6, 2026 the U.S. Supreme Court declined to block the law on an emergency application. The merits are still in the appeal. The accurate phrase is in effect while litigation continues. It is not upheld.

Utah's App Store Accountability Act is not on that same clock. House Bill 498, signed in March 2026, moved key operational duties to May 6, 2027 and removed the attorney general as the enforcer, leaving a private lawsuit path. A trade-group case was dismissed after that change. Louisiana's 2026 Act 185 sets store duties for July 1, 2027 and says the 2025 act does not take effect. Alabama's enrolled HB 161 takes effect January 1, 2027. California's Digital Age Assurance Act is a related age-signal law, operative January 1, 2027, and it is not the same statute as those store acts.

A headline that says Utah and Texas both require store age checks today is wrong on the dates. A parent in Austin and a parent in Salt Lake City are not under the same live duty. A developer who builds one compliance date for every state will miss the one that is already enforceable and rush the one that is not.

These laws also do not replace a parent's account inside an app. A store can gate the download. It does not, by itself, show you the chats. Ask both questions.

These state laws are not copies of each other. A duty in Georgia may be missing in Tennessee, and a date in one state is not a date in the next. Whether Congress will override some of them is a live debate, described on the federal AI preemption page. Until a federal statute actually does that, read the state text that applies to you.

App store age laws put an age check on the store before a download. On HeyOtto, a parent creates the account and a child does not self-enroll. That family step is not a claim that HeyOtto meets every state's store statute. Where a store shows an age screen, that screen is separate from the parent account inside the app.

• Parents can read chats in the parent dashboard.
• Distress produces an alert and crisis resources, not an automatic call to emergency services.
• HeyOtto does not claim this statute is already satisfied.