Yet Another Law Hiding Mandatory Age Verification Behind Child Safety Goes To Vote Tomorrow

A bill banning children under 16 from holding social media accounts will go before a House panel on Tuesday, September 1.

The Reducing Exploitative Social Media Exposure for Teens Act, or RESET Act, contains no explicit age-verification requirement.^[1] It leaves platforms to determine how they will identify underage users.

According to the bill, platforms can’t knowingly allow users under 16. It defines “knowing” as including actual knowledge or willful disregard.

This creates pressure for platforms to verify everyone’s age to avoid liability.

For adults, the answer could mean surrendering more personal information to keep using Instagram, Reddit, YouTube, Discord, or another user-generated-content platform.

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What the RESET Act would require

Rep. Erin Houchin, an Indiana Republican, introduced the RESET Act in December 2025. It would prohibit covered platforms from allowing anyone under 16 to create or maintain an account, even with parental permission.

Platforms would have a timeline to identify, notify, and terminate underage accounts after the law takes effect. Upon termination, platforms would generally have to delete the user’s personal data. Affected users would have 90 days to request a portable copy of their information.

“Covered platform” is defined broadly, covering many websites and apps beyond typical social media. Violations are subject to FTC enforcement and state lawsuits.

The age check hiding between the lines

The bill’s knowledge standard creates pressure to use something more reliable than a self-reported birthday. A platform that takes no meaningful steps to identify children could face allegations that it acted in “willful disregard.”

Examining only accounts that appear young would still require the company to decide which users look, sound, or behave like children.

Possible methods include:

• Requesting government-issued identification
• Asking users to submit selfies for facial age estimation
• Checking credit cards or other financial records
• Using third-party identity-verification companies
• Analyzing posts, friends, purchases, browsing patterns, and other account activity

Meta has historically used contextual clues, including birthday posts and references to school grades, to identify younger users without requesting identification, according to Reuters. That approach still involves analyzing what people post and who they interact with to infer their age.

The RESET Act provides no approved method, accuracy standard, or independent testing requirement. It also provides no formal appeals process for an adult whose account is incorrectly classified and terminated.

Verification data could become another privacy risk

The lack of rules gives platforms flexibility but leaves privacy risks unaddressed.

The bill requires platforms to delete personal data belonging to underage users whose accounts are terminated. It establishes no comparable rules for collecting, retaining, or deleting information gathered from adults during age checks.

It also places no explicit restrictions on combining age-assurance data with existing account profiles. The bill does not say how long an adult’s identification document or selfie could be retained, who employees could access it, or when a third-party provider would have to delete it.

These gaps could result in large databases of sensitive identification information.

In 2025, a breach involving one of Discord’s third-party service providers potentially exposed the government ID images of approximately 70,000 users. Some of those documents had been submitted during age-related appeals. Discord said the incident affected a third-party provider, but the result demonstrated what can happen when platforms collect sensitive documents to determine age.

The FTC has since said it will generally refrain from enforcing part of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act against companies that collect children’s information solely for age verification, provided they promptly delete it and satisfy other safeguards. Those conditions come from a separate FTC policy statement and do not appear in the RESET Act.

Facial age estimation brings different problems

Platforms may attempt to avoid storing identification documents by estimating a user’s age from a selfie.

That approach can reveal less information than a driver’s license, which includes a legal name, address, birth date, photograph, and document number. Users must still place their faces in the hands of a platform or verification provider.

Facial age estimation is also imperfect. The National Institute of Standards and Technology has found substantial differences in the performance of age-estimation algorithms. Accuracy can vary according to image quality, the algorithm used, and the demographic characteristics of the person being assessed.

Those errors matter when 16 is a hard cutoff. A 17-year-old or young-looking adult could lose access because an algorithm estimated the wrong age. A child whom the system mistakes for an adult could bypass the protection entirely.

The Act provides no error rate, backup process, or requirements for fixing mistakes.

States could lose the power to fill those gaps

A federal preemption clause could stop states from adding safeguards.

The bill says no state or political subdivision may “prescribe, maintain, or enforce” any law, regulation, requirement, or standard that relates to the section containing the under-16 ban.

This clause could block state laws on age checks, consent, and account access, replacing them with national rules.

As of July 2026, 21 states had passed laws regulating minors’ use of social media. Those laws take different approaches, including parental permission, restricted notifications, time limits, age assurance, and limits on personalized feeds.

The RESET Act could replace parts of that patchwork with a national under-16 ban while leaving the machinery required to enforce it largely to technology companies.

What happens Tuesday

The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade will consider the RESET Act during a markup beginning at 10:15 a.m. ET on Tuesday.

During a markup, subcommittee members can debate the bill, propose amendments, and vote on whether to advance it. Approval would send the bill to the full committee. It would still need to pass the House and Senate before reaching the president.

Lawmakers could still add privacy, accuracy, or appeals rules during this process.

The bottom line

The RESET Act’s goal is to keep children off social media, but it offers little guidance and could require broad age checks.

This could make age checks the price of social media, raising privacy concerns for all users.

When legislation forces companies to answer “How old are you?” about millions of people, privacy deserves a place in the answer.

Author Details

Thomas Kent

About the Author

Thomas Kent is a multi-disciplined reporter with over a decade of experience covering online platforms, digital trends, and consumer-facing tech. Tom focuses on digital privacy, data tracking, and user behavior, with a particular interest in how cookies, online surveillance, and platform design shape the modern internet experience. His reporting takes a research-driven, news-focused approach, translating complex technical topics into clear, accessible insights.