Somewhere in America tonight, parents will discover something on their child’s phone that they never approved, never knew existed, and never would have allowed. An app downloaded without permission. A purchase made without consent. A digital door opened to a world no child should enter alone.
This happens millions of times a day. And Big Tech has spent years making sure parents can’t stop the barrage. That is precisely what Texas is trying to change — and why the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) is fighting to help them succeed.
The Texas App Store Accountability Act, Senate Bill 2420, does something simple: It requires app stores to obtain parental consent before a minor can download an app or make an in-app purchase. Not a government censor deciding what children may see. Not a bureaucrat overriding family values. Just a parent — battling to stay in the loop, with a say, in their own child’s life.
The tech industry’s response? Litigation.
An Apple and Google-backed trade group has gone to federal court to strike down the law, arguing it violates the First Amendment. It’s a remarkable claim — that requiring a corporation to ask a parent’s permission before selling to their child somehow constitutes censorship.
It doesn’t. And courts have long recognized why.
When a child downloads an app, he isn’t simply reading a book — he is entering a legal relationship. He agrees to terms of service drafted by armies of lawyers. He consents to data harvesting. He opens the door to in-app purchases that can run into hundreds of dollars. These are commercial transactions — and for centuries, American law has held that minors cannot enter binding commercial agreements without parental involvement.
Children can’t buy alcohol. They can’t sign contracts. They can’t make major medical decisions alone. SB 2420 simply applies that same common sense to the app marketplace.
What makes the tech industry’s opposition so striking is what it reveals about their business model. These platforms are not neutral conduits for expression. They are engineered — deliberately and systematically — to maximize engagement, especially among young users. The algorithms that keep a 13-year-old scrolling at midnight were designed by some of the brightest minds in the world, optimized with billions of dollars and mountains of behavioral data, for exactly that purpose.
In Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, author Nir Eyal explains how tech companies shift user behavior through deliberate design — how “the products and services we use habitually alter our everyday behavior, just as their designers intended.” His central question cuts to the heart of the matter: How do companies, producing little more than bits of code displayed on a screen, seemingly control users’ minds?
The U.S. surgeon general has called social media a profound risk to youth mental health. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation among teenagers have climbed in lockstep with smartphone adoption. This is not coincidence, but consequence.
And yet when states try to give parents the tools to protect their children, the industry cries censorship and files lawsuits.
The Supreme Court has been clear that while the First Amendment limits government censorship, it does not strip states of the authority to protect minors — particularly when doing so supports rather than supplants parental judgment. In Ginsberg v. New York, the Court upheld age-based restrictions precisely because they helped parents, not government, make decisions for their children.
The Supreme Court’s long line of parental rights decisions — from Meyer v. Nebraska to Pierce v. Society of Sisters to Troxel v. Granville — all rest on a single principle: “The child is not the mere creature of the State.” SB 2420 stands firmly in that tradition.
It does not tell any parent what apps to allow. It does not ban content. It does not impose the government’s values on anyone’s family. It ensures only that parents are present — and in control — before their child enters the digital marketplace.
Critics warn that age verification is burdensome. But Americans verify their identity every day — to open bank accounts, board airplanes, buy cold medicine. App stores already collect this information at account creation. What they lack is not the capability to involve parents. What they lack is the will.
Texas is leading a national movement. Legislatures across the country are recognizing what parents already know: that the digital world didn’t come with safeguards, and that the companies profiting from children’s attention have no financial incentive to build them.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals now has an opportunity to affirm something the Constitution has always guaranteed — that parents, not platforms, hold the first and final authority over their children’s lives. Big Tech has lawyers, lobbyists, and limitless resources. Parents have the law, the Constitution, and the truth.
That should be enough.
