Edward Longe

Testimony of Dr. Edward Longe Of The James Madison Institute Before New Hampshire Commerce and Consumer Affairs Regarding HB1658 Chair Hunt and Members of the Commerce and Consumer Affairs Committee, My name is Dr. Edward Longe, and I serve as Director of National Strategy at the James Madison Institute. We're guided by the principles of individual responsibility, limited government, and free markets—principles I believe we share with many of you. As a new father to a 10 week old newborn, I take concerns about children's online safety seriously. But I respectfully recommend against age verification mandates—not because the problem isn't real, but because age verification is fundamentally flawed. It violates constitutional rights, wastes taxpayer money on doomed litigation, and accomplishes nothing for the families it claims to protect. Federal courts have struck down every social media age-verification mandate as unconstitutional. Rather than learn from these failures, legislators simply moved the compliance burden from platforms to app stores. The result? The exact same constitutional problems and the exact same outcomes. In Texas, a federal judge recently enjoined that state's App Store Accountability Act, warning that it "restricts access to a vast universe of speech by requiring Texans to prove their age before downloading a mobile app." In Arkansas, a federal judge struck down that state's social media age verification law, in similar grounds The pattern is unmistakable. Age verification mandates, whether imposed on platforms or app stores, lose in court every single time. Any such law will face immediate constitutional challenge, years of expensive litigation funded by taxpayers, and ultimately, an injunction. The only winners will be lawyers billing by the hour. Not a single child will be better protected. Beyond the constitutional problems, age verification mandates create dangerous precedents for privacy and government power. These mandates force platforms to collect and verify age data on every resident who uses an app store. The government requires private companies to build databases linking identities to ages, locations, and every app downloaded. In practice, that means uploading government IDs, submitting to facial recognition scans, or providing credit card information. Every resident—adult and teen alike—must prove their age.. Yes, age verification can block access to some harmful content. but it does so by restricting everyone's speech and treating every app download as presumptively dangerous. Age verification doesn't stop determined teenagers. It doesn't teach critical thinking. What it does do is normalize digital surveillance, create data honeypots vulnerable to breaches, and condition an entire generation to accept that constitutional rights require government permission slips. Age verification mandates also strip decision-making authority from parents and transfer it to tech companies and state bureaucrats. Different families will take different approaches based on their values and their children's maturity—that's called parenting, not a problem requiring legislative solutions. In 2023, Florida required public schools to teach social media literacy—covering mental health risks, the permanence of shared content, and how to identify predatory behavior and human trafficking tactics. Unlike age-verification mandates, this faced no constitutional challenges. More importantly, it's equipping young Floridians to navigate online spaces safely without restricting speech or undermining parental authority. Tennessee, Georgia, and North Carolina have followed suit. A constitutional alternative exists—and it works. A fifteen-year-old who learns to recognize manipulative content carries that knowledge across every digital space they'll encounter. They'll spot deepfakes, identify scams, and understand when they're being exploited. These are life skills that don't expire at eighteen—unlike age verification gates that simply open when teenagers become adults. I understand the pressure to "do something." But doing something unconstitutional is worse than doing nothing at all. Age verification creates the illusion of protection while building surveillance infrastructure that threatens everyone's privacy, wastes taxpayer money on inevitable litigation, and fails to address the actual challenges teenagers face online. The evidence is clear: waste money on losing lawsuits while building a surveillance state, or invest in education that respects constitutional rights, preserves parental authority, and actually protects children. A proven constitutional path forward exists. I encourage you to pursue it. Thank you. I'm happy to answer questions.