As Colorado lawmakers once again revisit online age verification, the debate is no longer about whether to protect children online. It is about how and whether the tools being proposed can realistically accomplish 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 lean on centralized technology ecosystems, particularly mobile operating systems and app stores, as enforcement points rather than attempting to regulate the open web directly.

Senate Bill 26-051 reflects that pattern. The bill does not directly regulate individual websites that publish adult or otherwise restricted content. Instead, it shifts responsibility to operating system providers and app distribution infrastructure.

Under the bill, an operating system provider would be required to collect a user’s date of birth or age information when an account is established. The provider would then generate an age bracket signal and make that signal available to developers through an application programming interface when an app is downloaded or accessed through a covered application store.

App developers, in turn, would be required to request and use that age bracket signal.

Rather than mandating that every website perform its own age verification check, the bill attempts to embed age attestation within the operating system account layer and have that classification flow through app store ecosystems.

The measure represents the latest iteration in a series of Colorado efforts that have struggled to balance child safety, privacy, feasibility and constitutional limits.

Colorado lawmakers have grappled with age verification policy for several sessions. In 2025, Senate Bill 25-201 sought to require certain websites that publish material deemed 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 checks.

SB 25-201 advanced out of committee but ultimately did not pass and is marked as lost after multiple second reading layovers.

The bill included provisions requiring that platforms offer at least one age verification method that did not disclose a user’s identity and required compliance with Colorado’s Privacy Act data handling standards.

Still, it faced significant First Amendment and enforcement concerns. Civil liberties groups argued that requiring users to submit government-issued identification or other sensitive credentials to access lawful 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 Colorado’s jurisdiction.

Another 2025 measure, Senate Bill 25-086, took a broader regulatory approach. It required social media companies to make commercially reasonable efforts to determine user age categories and imposed reporting and design-related requirements tied 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 sweeping platform mandates at the state level.

Against that backdrop, SB 26-051 takes a different structural approach. Instead of focusing on specific categories of websites or imposing direct verification obligations on individual publishers, it moves enforcement closer to the hardware and operating system layer that mediates access to mobile applications.

The shift is partly technical. Smartphones and tablets operate within vertically integrated systems. A limited number of companies control the operating system, the application marketplace, the account infrastructure and the software distribution pipeline.

That structure creates a defined compliance point. Lawmakers can require operating system providers to generate an age signal and require app developers to rely on that signal.

By contrast, desktop and laptop environments remain far more open. There is no single universal app store that governs all software installation. Users can download programs directly from developers’ websites.

Web browsers provide access to millions of independently operated sites across jurisdictions. Cloud infrastructure is globally distributed. There is no single chokepoint on a desktop or laptop where a state can easily impose age verification without fundamentally altering how the open web functions.

SB 26-051’s operating system-level age attestation requirement reflects that reality. It targets the segments of the digital ecosystem where centralized control already exists, even if other access pathways remain available.

As of the current legislative session, SB 26-051 has been introduced and assigned to the Senate Committee on Business, Labor, and Technology. The committee is scheduled to take up the bill on February 24.

Like prior efforts, the bill is expected to face scrutiny over its constitutional footing, technical feasibility and privacy implications. Recent federal court decisions in other states have underscored the legal uncertainty surrounding age verification mandates, particularly those affecting access to lawful adult speech.

Courts have examined whether such laws are narrowly tailored and whether less restrictive alternatives, including parental controls, are available. That judicial backdrop is likely to shape how Colorado lawmakers evaluate and potentially refine the bill.

At the same time, political momentum behind child online safety legislation remains strong. Lawmakers across party lines continue to frame age attestation and related requirements as responses to concerns about exposure to explicit material, social media harms and addictive platform design.

That shared concern has kept successive proposals alive even as earlier versions have failed or been vetoed.

Legislation that conditions app downloads and access on an operating system-generated age signal may reduce friction in certain contexts, particularly within centralized mobile ecosystems. But it does not eliminate alternative access pathways.

Many services that exist as mobile apps are also accessible 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, determined users may 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 online material.

If the objective is to meaningfully 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 government issued identification to access websites and digital services.

Such a system would effectively end anonymous browsing and would represent a profound transformation of the Internet’s architecture, raising sweeping privacy, civil liberties and data security concerns.

The other approach centers on parental control. Major technology companies already provide device level and account level tools that allow parents to filter content, restrict downloads, set time limits and monitor usage. These systems can be tailored to family preferences and activated voluntarily.

Age attestation mandates like SB 26-051 occupy a middle ground. They attempt to impose standardized compliance obligations within existing mobile ecosystems without requiring universal identification across the open web.

In doing so, they expand the role of the state 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 navigate that tension. The political appeal of protecting children online is clear.

The harder question is whether operating system-level age attestation can deliver 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  |  United States