Apple CEO Tim Cook Pushes for Changes in US Child Online Safety Bill, Citing Privacy Concerns

Apple CEO Tim Cook met US House members on Wednesday to push back against federal legislation that could require the iPhone maker to authenticate users' ages and possibly collect sensitive data on children, lobbying instead to put the onus on parents to decide whether to tell app stores about a child's age.

The bill, called the App Store Accountability Act, is aimed at making sure that minors are not using harmful content online.

Texas has already signed a similar bill into law, requiring parental consent to download apps or make in-app purchases for users aged below 18. Utah was the first US state to pass a similar law earlier this year, and Australia introduced a nationwide social media ban on under-16s this week.

While the notion of age limits for online content has broad US public support, legislative efforts have kicked off a behind-the-scenes brawl between Apple and Google and tech rivals such as Meta Platforms. Apple and Google, which own the largest app stores in the world, say verifying the age of minors could entail mass collection of children's birth certificates and other sensitive documents, while Facebook and Instagram owner Meta has argued that requiring app stores to check ages is the only effective way to enforce limits.

Apple, which has long resisted government interference in data privacy matters, has expressed concerns that the federal US legislation would require it to collect identifying information about virtually every Apple user, including children. Cook met House Energy and Commerce Committee members on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to discuss the concerns, Apple said.

"Not all legislative proposals are equally protective of privacy or focused on holding all players in the ecosystem accountable," Apple's global head of privacy, Hilary Ware, said in a letter to the committee last week. “Some well-intended proposals for age verification at the app marketplace level ... would require the collection of sensitive information about anyone who wants to download an app, even if it’s an app that simply provides weather updates or sports scores.”

A Pew Research poll in 2023 found that 81% of Americans support requiring parental consent for children to create social media accounts and 71% support age verification before using social media.

Read more: Australia Asks Social Media Companies to Report Progress on Teen Account Ban