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ARIZONA STATE SENATE
Fifty-Seventh Legislature, Second Regular Session
social media; online content; minors.
Purpose
Prescribes duties for social media platforms regarding account holders who are minors and online age verification requirements for commercial entities that knowingly and intentionally publish or distribute of material that is harmful to minors on a website or application.
Background
In 2025, the Legislature enacted the requirement for a commercial entity that knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes material on an internet website, including a social media platform, of which more than one-third is sexual material that is harmful to minors to use reasonable age verification methods to verify that an individual who attempts to access the material is 18 years of age or older. A commercial entity or a third-party that performs the age verification must not: 1) retain any identifying information of the individual; or 2) cause or allow any identifying information to be directly or indirectly transmitted to any government entity. A parent or guardian of a minor who accesses material harmful to minors, and a person whose identifying information was unlawfully retained or transmitted, have a right of action against the offending entity (Laws 2025, Ch. 193; A.R.S. § 18-701).
In 2025, the Legislature also enacted content restrictions on digital advertising directed towards children. Beginning January 1, 2027, a child-directed application must take appropriate measures to prevent the display of inappropriate and mature advertisements on child-directed applications. Inappropriate and mature advertisement is an advertisement that sells or promotes: 1) violence; 2) explicit language; 3) sexual content; or 4) alcohol or drug use. A child-directed application that does not comply with the content restrictions is subject to a civil penalty of up to $100,000 per violation. The Attorney General must enforce the child-directed application content restrictions (Laws 2025, Ch. 198; A.R.S. § 44-1483).
There is no anticipated fiscal impact to the state General Fund associated with this legislation.
Provisions
Social Media Platform Duties
1. Prohibits a social media platform from entering into an account holder contract with a minor who is less than 14 years of age unless the minor's parent or guardian provides consent for the minor to become an account holder.
2. States that, for the purposes of the account holder contract requirements, if a social media platform allows an account holder to use the social media platform, the social media platform and the account holder have entered into an account holder contract.
3. Requires a social media platform to:
a) terminate any account held by an account holder who is less than 14 years of age, including accounts that the social media platform treats or categorizes as belonging to an account holder who is probably less than 14 years of age for the purpose of targeting content or advertising, providing 90 days for an account holder to dispute the termination before its effective;
b) allow an account holder who is less than 14 years of age to request to terminate the account which must be effective within five business days after the request;
c) allow the confirmed parent or guardian of an account holder who is less than 14 years of age to request that the account be terminated which must be effective within 10 business days after the request;
d) terminate an account held by an account holder who is 14 or 15 years of age, including an account that the social media platform treats or categorizes as belonging to an account holder who is probably 14 or 15 years of age for the purpose of targeting content or advertising, if the account holder's parent or guardian has not provided consent for the minor to create or maintain the account, providing an account holder 90 days after the termination to dispute the termination before its effective;
e) allow an account holder who is 14 or 15 years of age to request to terminate the account which must be effective within five business days after the request;
f) allow the confirmed parent or guardian of an account holder who is 14 or 15 years of age to request that the minor's account be terminated which must be effective within 10 business days after the request; and
g) permanently delete all personal information held by the social media platform relating to a terminated account unless there are legal requirements to maintain the information.
4. Deems a knowing or reckless violation of the termination requirement of any account held by a minor who is less than 14 years of age as an unlawful practice in accordance with the Arizona Consumer Fraud Act.
5. Requires a civil action for a claim under social media platform account holder requirements to be brought within one year after the date that the complainant knew or reasonably should have known of the violation.
Online Age Verification
6. Requires a commercial entity that knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes material that is harmful to minors on a website or application, if the website or application contains a substantial portion of material that is harmful to minors to do all of the following:
a) use either anonymous age verification or standard age verification to verify that the person attempting to access the material that is harmful to minors is at least 18 years of age;
b) prevent access to the material that is harmful to minors by a person who is less than 18 years of age;
c) offer anonymous age verification and standard age verification and allow a person attempting to access the material harmful to minors to select which method will be used to verify the person's age; and
d) ensure that a third party conducting anonymous age verification:
i. does not retain personal identifying information used to verify age once the age of an account holder or a person seeking an account has been verified;
ii. does not use personal identifying information that is used to verify age for any other purpose;
iii. keeps anonymous any personal identifying information used to verify age and does not share or otherwise communicate the information to any person; and
iv. protects personal identifying information used to verify age from unauthorized or illegal access, destruction, use, modification or disclosure through reasonable security procedures and practices appropriate to the nature of the personal information.
Miscellaneous
7. Defines account holder as a resident who opens an account or creates a profile or who is identified by a social media platform by a unique identifier while using or accessing the social media platform when the social media platform knows or has reason to believe the resident is located in Arizona.
8. Defines anonymous age verification as a commercially reasonable method that is used by a government agency or a business for the purpose of age verification that is conducted by a nongovernmental, independent third party that is organized under the laws of a state of the United States that both:
a) has its principal place of business in a state of the United States; and
b) is not owned or controlled by a company formed in a foreign country, a government of a foreign country or any other entity formed in a foreign country.
9. Defines commercial entity as including a corporation, a limited liability company, a partnership, a limited partnership, a sole proprietorship and any other legally recognized entity.
10. Defines daily active users as the number of unique users in the United States who used the social media platform at least 80 percent of the days during either:
a) the previous 12-month period; or
b) the previous one-month period if the social media platform did not exist during the previous 12-month period.
11. Defines distribute as issuing, selling, giving, providing, delivering, transferring, transmitting, circulating or disseminating by any means.
12. Defines harmful to minors as that quality of any description or representation, in whatever form, of nudity, sexual activity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sadomasochistic abuse, when both:
a) to the average adult applying contemporary state standards with respect to what is suitable for minors, it both:
i. appeals to the prurient interest, when taken as a whole; and
ii. portrays the description or representation in a patently offensive way; and
b) taken as a whole does not have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.
13. Defines infinite scrolling as content that is continuously loading or content that loads as the user scrolls down the webpage without the need to open a separate webpage.
14. Defines publish as communicating or making information available to another person on a publicly available website or application.
15. Defines resident as a person who lives in Arizona for more than six months of the year.
16. Defines social media platform as an online forum, website or application that satisfies each of the following criteria:
a) allows a user to upload content or view the content or activity of other users;
b) 10 percent or more of the daily active users who are less than 16 years of age spent on average at least two hours per day on the online forum, website or application on the days when using the online forum, website or application during the previous 12 months or, if the online forum, website or application did not exist during the previous twelve months, during the previous one-month period;
c) employs algorithms that analyze user data or information on users to select content for users;
d) has infinite scrolling or seamless content or the use of webpages with no visible or apparent end or page breaks;
e) has push notifications or alerts sent by an online forum, website or application to inform a user about specific activities or events related to the user's account;
f) displays personal interactive metrics that indicate the number of times other users have clicked a button to indicate the users' reactions to content or have shared or reposted the content;
g) has auto-play video or video that begins to play without the user first clicking on the video or on a play button for that video; and
h) has live-streaming or has a function that allows a user or advertiser to broadcast live video content in real-time.
17. Excludes, from the definition of social media platform, an online service, website or application where the exclusive function is email or direct messaging consisting of text, photographs, pictures, images or videos that are shared only between the sender and the recipients and that are not displayed or posted publicly or to other users that are not specifically identified by the sender as the recipients.
18. Defines standard age verification as any commercially reasonable method of age verification that is approved by the commercial entity.
19. Defines substantial portion as more than 33.3 percent of total material on a website or application.
20. Becomes effective on the general effective date.
Prepared by Senate Research
February 16, 2026
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