As Colorado lawmakers once again review online age verification, the debate is no longer about whether children should be protected online. It’s about how and whether the tools being proposed can realistically achieve that goal.
In recent years, Colorado has joined a growing number of states considering legislation aimed at limiting minors’ access to online content deemed harmful. The proposals have varied in structure but share a common thread.
Many rely on centralized technology ecosystems, particularly mobile operating systems and app stores, as enforcement points, rather than attempting to directly regulate the open web.
Senate Bill 26-051 reflects that pattern. The bill does not directly regulate individual websites that post adult or otherwise restricted content. Instead, it shifts responsibility to operating system vendors and application delivery infrastructure.
Under the bill, an operating system provider would be required to collect a user’s date of birth or age when establishing an account. The provider would then generate an age group token and make it available to developers through an application programming interface when an app is downloaded or accessed through a covered app store.
App developers, in turn, should request and use that age group signal.
Instead of requiring each website to perform its own age verification, the bill attempts to embed age certification within the account layer of the operating system and have that classification flow through app store ecosystems.
The measure represents the latest iteration of a series of efforts in Colorado that have struggled to balance child safety, privacy, feasibility and constitutional limits.
Colorado lawmakers have grappled with the age verification policy for several sessions. In 2025, the Senate Bill 25-201 sought to require certain websites that publish material considered harmful to children to implement age verification systems.
The bipartisan proposal mirrored legislation advancing in other states that targeted adult content platforms and imposed mandatory age controls.
SB 25-201 made it out of committee but ultimately did not pass and is marked lost after multiple stops on second reading.
The bill included provisions requiring platforms to offer at least one age verification method that would not reveal the user’s identity and requiring compliance with the data handling standards of the Colorado Privacy Act.
Still, he faced significant concerns about the First Amendment and its application. Civil liberties groups argued that requiring users to present government-issued identification or other sensitive credentials to access legal speech would burden adults’ rights and create new security risks if that information were breached.
Technical experts questioned whether a state mandate could effectively regulate websites hosted outside of Colorado’s jurisdiction.
Another 2025 measure, Senate Bill 25-086adopted a broader regulatory approach. It required social media companies to make commercially reasonable efforts to determine the age categories of users and imposed reporting and design requirements linked to minors.
That bill was ultimately vetoed by Governor Jared Polis in April 2025. The veto reflected concerns about feasibility, constitutional exposure, and the complexity of imposing broad platform mandates at the state level.
In that context, SB 26-051 takes a different structural approach. Rather than focusing on specific categories of websites or imposing direct verification obligations on individual publishers, it brings enforcement closer to the hardware and operating system layer that mediates access to mobile apps.
The change is partly technical. Smartphones and tablets operate within vertically integrated systems. A limited number of companies control the operating system, application marketplace, account infrastructure, and software distribution channel.
That structure creates a defined fulfillment point. Lawmakers can require operating system vendors to generate an age signal and require application developers to rely on that signal.
In contrast, desktop and laptop environments remain much more open. There is no single universal app store that governs all software installation. Users can download programs directly from the developers’ websites.
Web browsers provide access to millions of independently operated sites in all jurisdictions. The cloud infrastructure is distributed globally. There is no single critical point on a desktop or laptop computer where a state can easily impose age verification without fundamentally altering the functioning of the open web.
SB 26-051’s OS-level age certification requirement reflects that reality. It targets segments of the digital ecosystem where centralized control already exists, even if other avenues of access remain available.
As of the current legislative session, SB 26-051 has been introduced and assigned to the Senate Business, Labor and Technology Committee. The committee is scheduled to consider the bill on February 24.
Like previous efforts, the bill is expected to face scrutiny over its constitutional foundation, its technical feasibility and its privacy implications. Recent federal court decisions in other states have underscored the legal uncertainty surrounding age verification mandates, particularly those that affect adults’ access to legal speech.
Courts have examined whether such laws are specifically tailored and whether less restrictive alternatives, including parental controls, exist. That judicial background is likely to shape how Colorado lawmakers evaluate and potentially refine the bill.
At the same time, the political momentum behind child online safety legislation remains strong. Lawmakers of all parties continue to frame age certification and related requirements as responses to concerns about exposure to explicit material, the harms of social media, and the design of addictive platforms.
That shared concern has kept successive proposals alive even when previous versions failed or were vetoed.
Legislation that conditions app downloads and access to an operating system-generated age signal can reduce friction in certain contexts, particularly within centralized mobile ecosystems. But it does not eliminate alternative access routes.
Many services that exist as mobile applications can also be accessed through web browsers. School-issued laptops, shared family computers, and public library terminals are not governed by the same mobile app store infrastructure.
If the same content remains available through the open web, certain users will be able to bypass mobile restrictions. That dynamic has led critics to argue that such laws risk offering the appearance of safety without comprehensively addressing how minors access material online.
If the goal is to significantly restrict minors’ access to specific categories of online content, policymakers face a more fundamental choice.
One approach would be universal identity verification for Internet access, requiring users to present a government-issued ID to access websites and digital services.
Such a system would effectively end anonymous browsing and represent a profound transformation of the Internet architecture, raising broad concerns about privacy, civil liberties, and data security.
The other approach focuses on parental control. Major technology companies already offer device- and account-level tools that allow parents to filter content, restrict downloads, set time limits, and monitor usage. These systems can be adapted to family preferences and activated voluntarily.
Age certification mandates like SB 26-051 occupy a middle ground. They attempt to impose standardized compliance obligations within existing mobile ecosystems without requiring universal identification on the open web.
In doing so, they expand the state’s role in shaping digital identity infrastructure, while leaving much of the broader Internet unchanged.
Whether Colorado ultimately advances SB 26-051 will depend on how lawmakers handle that tension. The political appeal of protecting children online is clear.
The more difficult question is whether age certification at the operating system level can provide meaningful protection without reshaping digital identity systems in ways that raise new constitutional and privacy concerns.
Article topics
age verification | app store age verification | children | Colorado | data privacy | device-based age verification | legislation | USA
