Gov. Kathy Hochul made new requirements meant to protect kids online a centerpiece of her plan for state policy.
Gov. Kathy Hochul made new requirements meant to protect kids online a centerpiece of her plan for state policy.
is a senior policy reporter at The Verge, covering the intersection of Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill. She spent 5 years covering tech policy at CNBC, writing about antitrust, privacy, and content moderation reform.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is making kids’ online safety a cornerstone of her administration, and she’s eyeing a platform that has often flown under the radar: Roblox.
As progress in Congress has stagnated, states have become the primary drivers of internet reforms meant to protect kids, including age verification laws and new requirements for online platforms. Hochul announced a sweeping plan to expand online parental controls and age verification, which she’ll tout at her State of the State on Tuesday. It notably pulls from a piece of legislation crafted by state Sen. Andrew Gounardes and Assemblymember Nily Rozic meant to plug a gap in earlier state legislation in order to encompass online gaming. Gounardes told The Verge in a 2024 interview when he first introduced the legislation as the New York Children’s Online Safety Act (NYCOSA) — now the Stop Online Predators Act — that the idea came from parents who wondered whether his earlier kids safety legislation would cover Roblox, the social gaming platform that is extremely popular with children.
Drawing from the bill, Hochul’s plans include expanding requirements for platforms to verify their users’ ages to include online gaming platforms like Roblox. She also wants platforms to keep kids’ accounts on the highest privacy settings by default so that they can’t be seen or contacted by unknown accounts, and to disable AI chatbot features for kids. The plan also includes requirements for parents to be able to limit financial transactions on their kids’ accounts.
New York state leaders don’t want Roblox, for which more than 40 percent of users are reportedly under age 13, to be left out of new protections. “From toys to food to cars, we regulate all sorts of products to keep children safe. There’s no reason platforms like Roblox should be different,” Gounardes said in a statement ahead of the State of the State. “Online platforms like Roblox are enabling unsafe environments for children, including allowing predators to send explicit messages to children,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. “We urgently need to pass crucial online safety protections to stop predators from exploiting children and create safer online environments for children to play.”
Roblox did not immediately provide comment on the State of the State proposal, but Roblox spokesperson Eric Porterfield told The Verge after Gounardes unveiled the legislation in 2024 that the company is a “COPPA compliant gaming platform that is designed for all ages,” referring to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA). Porterfield said Roblox has “gone beyond COPPA-compliance and built safety tools and systems that address the unique needs of children and do not support photo uploads or other features specific to social media platforms.” The company has since rolled out new requirements for users to undergo a facial scan to estimate their age in order to access its chat features.
The kids online safety proposals were the first of the State of the State plans that Hochul previewed last week, underscoring how important an issue that internet safeguards for kids has become in states like New York. States have been at the forefront of such discussions as Congress has largely failed to pass new protections since the 1990s. The proposals come alongside offline actions to address kids’ mental health, including expanded mental health clinics in schools, and an advisory board that includes 11-to-17-year-olds to inform youth mental health policy. They build on earlier legislation passed in New York state, including the Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) For Kids Act, which requires social media companies to obtain parental consent for using “addictive feeds” on kids.
But some of the proposals, like age verification, come with their own risks that opponents ranging from industry players to civil liberties groups oppose on the grounds that they could require more data collection, and potentially chill adults’ speech online. The Supreme Court recently opened the door to some age verification of porn sites, breaking from earlier decisions, but age-gating platforms that host a wide variety of speech raises even thornier questions. Courts across the country have struck down a variety of laws seeking to impose age verification at the platform and app store level, raising questions of constitutionality under the First Amendment. But states have continued to try to enact different kinds of age verification laws nonetheless, creating the potential for a fractured landscape state to state should some courts eventually uphold them.
Still, many advocates for more online safeguards are praising Hochul’s plans. “The online games kids play and the social media platforms they use for hours and hours a day have become veritable hunting grounds for predators,” Common Sense Media CEO Jim Steyer said in a statement. “Kids and teens need these new protections now more than ever.”