Topic
Children Teens and Age Verification
This hub separates the overlapping regimes that govern children, teenagers, and age verification for Texas organizations. It starts with federal law: COPPA's operator duties, actual-knowledge standard, parental consent, retention, security, and third-party rules under the amended rule in 16 C.F.R. part 312, kept distinct from the FTC's separate 2026 age-verification enforcement policy statement. It then treats the Texas statutes as distinct enactments with provision-specific litigation status: the SCOPE Act (HB 18) with its monitoring, filtering, and parental-tool duties, and the App Store Accountability Act (SB 2420) with its app-store and developer obligations, each carrying its own reported court history, including the reported July 2026 SCOPE appellate ruling and the 2025 to 2026 SB 2420 injunction and stay sequence, rather than a blended one. It covers adult-content age verification under HB 1181 in light of Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton. A separate guide treats age assurance as a design discipline: identification versus estimation, parental-relationship evidence, proportionality, retention and security of verification data, and the risks that verification itself creates through new document, biometric, and profiling collection. The hub also covers federal platform duties under the TAKE IT DOWN Act and keeps age-appropriate design guidance from importing duties that do not exist in Texas law.
Key questions
- Which rules govern children and age checks
- What does COPPA require of a covered operator
- How do the SCOPE Act and the App Store Accountability Act differ in duties and litigation status
- When is age verification required for adult content
- What data risks does age verification itself create
Controlling authorities
16 C.F.R. part 312 (amended COPPA Rule); the FTC's February 2026 age-verification enforcement policy statement (agency policy, not the rule); SCOPE Act, HB 18; App Store Accountability Act, SB 2420; HB 1181; Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton; the TAKE IT DOWN Act (2025) (enactment status and operative dates are research leads for drafting).
Guides in this hub
- LG11: COPPA and Children Under Thirteen
What COPPA requires for children under thirteen, stated as current rule and policy rather than shorthand. - LG12: SCOPE App Stores and Known Minors
Two Texas statutes, two sets of actors: SCOPE duties for digital services and app-store duties under SB 2420, each with its litigation status. - LG13: Age Assurance and Children by Design
How to design age assurance that satisfies Texas duties without creating new privacy risks.
Planned insights
- I06 The COPPA Rule and the Separate Age Verification Policy (current rule duties and the distinct scope of the FTC's 2026 enforcement statement)
- I07 SCOPE and App Stores Have Different Litigation Histories (provision-level statutory and court status); candidates from the bank: separate, accurately attributed SCOPE and app-store appellate rulings
- COPPA rule implementation versus policy.
Tracker records
- K13 Texas SCOPE Act HB 18
- K14 current SCOPE litigation orders and appeals
- K15 Texas App Store Accountability Act SB 2420
- K16 current SB 2420 trial and appellate orders
- K32 COPPA statute and amended rule
- K33 FTC 2026 age-verification policy statement
- RK006 SCOPE Act
- RK007 App Store Accountability Act
- RK008 age verification for adult content
- RK025 TikTok
- RK026 Texas AG December 2024 platform investigations
- RK028 Texas AG Character.AI August 2025 CID
- RK036 Snap
- RK040 Discord
- RK041 Roblox
- RK052 COPPA and the amended COPPA Rule (16 C.F.R. part 312)
- RK058 TAKE IT DOWN Act (2025) platform notice-and-removal duties.