EPIC’s Model Age-Appropriate Design Code

EPIC’s Model Age-Appropriate Design Code (AADC) protects kids online by prohibiting addictive design features for minors, giving them control over their privacy, and preventing companies from designing to promote compulsive use.

As momentum continues to surge in state legislatures to protect children from online harm, EPIC’s model bill takes the right approach. The blueprint focuses on companies’ harmful design choices, avoiding pitfalls found in other models, such as requiring parental consent for a minor to access social media or forcing all users to undergo age verification to access an online platform.

The bill:

• Gives children agency over their online experiences;
• Prohibits specific high-risk design practices;
• Requires large companies to evaluate design features for risk of compulsive use; and
• Provides critical transparency for researchers, policymakers, and users into companies’ design practices.

In drafting the model bill, EPIC relied on its deep privacy knowledge, significant state policy experience, and expertise in speech-protective platform regulation. The model bill has been carefully designed to avoid constitutional issues that have been raised over similar child online safety laws.

EPIC also recently co-published the People-First Chatbot Bill with the Consumer Federation of America and Fairplay. The People-First Chatbot Bill gives lawmakers a straightforward approach to address the harms caused by chatbots that have been developed and deployed by tech companies with little oversight or transparency. In combination, these two model bills go a long way toward protecting privacy and ensuring digital platforms, including chatbots, are designed safely and responsibly.