Jeff Horwitz and Aaron Tilley:

“Age verifying app by app is a case of whack-a-mole,” said Chris McKenna, founder of advocacy group Protect Young Eyes, who also advises Apple on digital-safety issues for children. “Every device knows the age of its user. We give our devices an enormous amount of our identity.”

An Apple spokesman said that websites and social-media companies are best positioned to verify a user’s age and that user privacy expectations would be violated if the company was required to share the age of its users with third-party apps. Apple provides tools that allow parents to control the devices of their children, the spokesman said.

The company reiterated its allegation that Meta Platforms’s META 0.60% efforts to steer legislative responsibility toward Apple are an attempt to deflect responsibility for its challenges with child-safety issues.

A spokeswoman for Meta—the parent of Facebook, Instagram and other apps—disputed that assertion, saying that verifying a child’s age app-by-app isn’t practical.