A nationwide internet age verification plan is sweeping Congress
For years, lawmakers at the state and federal levels have tried a variety of measures aimed at making kids safer on the internet, from kids-tailored design standards to age verification for individual websites. More recently, a new model has caught on in the states, and now it's gaining steam in Congress: putting the onus on app stores nationwide.
The new approach to age verification orders mobile app stores to verify users' ages, then send that information to apps when users download them. The idea has been around for a while, but it was just this year that the first of these laws was passed in Utah, quickly followed by versions in several …