Overview
- The governor outlined legislation that would expand age-verification requirements across platforms, including online gaming services such as Roblox.
- Children’s accounts would default to the highest privacy settings, blocking messages and tags from non-contacts, hiding profiles from strangers, disabling location sharing, and requiring parental approval for new connections under 13.
- The plan would restrict AI chatbot features directed at minors on social and youth-focused platforms.
- Parents would gain tools to cap or block children’s financial transactions on apps and platforms.
- The proposal serves as the first plank of Hochul’s State of the State agenda, builds on New York’s SAFE for Kids Act and the school cellphone ban, and remains a set of measures to be introduced and debated rather than enacted.