Why the App Store Accountability Act is a child safety imperative

At the Dickerson Children’s Advocacy Center, we serve children and families who have experienced trauma no child or individual should ever have to go through.

Last year, we served 1,190 children, up almost 500 since 2024, and other organizations like ours across the country are witnessing abuse and traumatic events occur at unfathomable rates.

Over the years, we have walked alongside thousands of children whose lives were shattered by abuse and neglect, and we have built the resources to help them heal and to hold the people who harmed them accountable.

But times are changing and so is the nature of abuse.

Now the harm can begin in a child’s pocket. On a screen. Inside an app that a parent never approved and often does not even know exists.

On their devices, children can experience cyberbullying, sextortion, and financial manipulation — and the dangers don’t even end there. These are all serious threats to the safety of children and should be handled with the same care we treat each case of real-world abuse with.

When a child is hurt, the response from the adults around them must be swift, coordinated, and unwavering.

That is why the App Store Accountability Act is so important. Bills with that title have been proposed in both the state Legislature and in Congress.

Put SC families first in the digital age with parental app controls

For too long, the conversation about children and technology has focused on chasing individual apps and individual bad actors after the damage is already done.

The App Store Accountability Act does something different, and something long overdue: it addresses the problem at its source. Though the South Carolina bill never got a vote this session, it can be re-introduced for next year.

It does three straightforward things. First, it requires app stores to verify a user’s age when an account is created, so a 10-year-old cannot simply lie about their age and have access to a world of inappropriate content.

Second, it requires every account belonging to a minor to be tied to a verified parent or guardian, meaning a child cannot download a new app or agree to a binding terms-of-service contract without parental consent.

Third, it forces app developers to stop hiding behind vague age ratings and instead spell out, in plain terms, what their product contains and why it is, or is not, appropriate for a given age.

If you want to understand why this cannot wait another legislative session, look at what has been happening with artificial intelligence chatbots. Researchers conducted a six-week study in
which they posed as children and interacted with the bot.

They found that every five minutes they were exposed to harmful content: grooming, sexual exploitation, encouragement of self-harm.

That is not an accident of engineering. That is a product being aggressively marketed, without meaningful gatekeeping, to the most vulnerable users.

Lawmakers cannot conduct forensic interviews. They cannot provide trauma therapy.

They cannot hold a child’s hand in a hospital hallway. But they can decide whether a 12-year-old must get a parent’s approval before downloading an AI companion engineered to keep her engaged at any emotional cost.

They can decide whether developers have to tell the truth about what their products actually do. They can decide whether the front door to the digital world has a lock on it, or whether we keep leaving it wide open and asking children to fend for themselves.

At Dickerson, some of the most important work we do is convening multi-disciplinary teams. Around a single child’s case, we bring together law enforcement, medical professionals, prosecutors, mental health clinicians, and child protective services so that the response to abuse is coordinated instead of fragmented.

It works because we learned a long time ago that no one profession, and no one adult, can protect a child alone.

The App Store Accountability Act is our elected officials taking their seat at that same table.

Our job, at Dickerson, is to keep showing up for the children who have already been hurt, and to keep telling the truth, plainly, about what we see.