Washington SB 6111 (Age Checks for Social Media Accounts)

Washington, United StatesWashington SB 6111Updated March 12, 2026

Stoppedno longer moving
Bad for your rightsDefeated

Died in committee when the 2026 session ended

Washington SB 6111 would have made anyone opening a social media account register their age and face "commercially reasonable" age verification, with parental consent (for example, by video call) for users the platform knew to be 16 or younger.

Latest update

Died in committee when the session ended

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The bill

Read the full billOfficial bill record

Key facts

Where
Washington, United States
Bill number
Washington SB 6111
Status
Defeated
Introduced
January 14, 2026
Threat
Medium
Last update
March 12, 2026

Topics

Age VerificationPrivacyCensorshipFree Speech

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What it does

SB 6111 barred social platforms from opening any account unless the person "registered the person's age," and required providers to "make commercially reasonable efforts to verify the age" of everyone signing up, at a certainty "appropriate to the risks" (Sec. 3). It named no verification method and set no data deletion rule. Users a provider knew to be 16 or younger needed a parent's express consent, for example by video call (Sec. 3(2)). For those users, platforms had to limit data collection, skip precise location tracking, bar sharing or selling their data except in listed cases, and adopt a strategy to limit exposure to listed harmful content (Secs. 4-5). The Attorney General enforced it, with fines up to $10,000 per injunction violation; parents could sue for declaratory or injunctive relief (Sec. 6).

What’s at stake

The verification duty in Section 3 covered everyone creating an account, so adults would have had to give up age data before joining any covered social platform. The bill let providers pick the method and set no limit on how long they kept the data, which left ID uploads and face scans open with no deletion rule. The content strategy in Section 5 would push platforms to filter more speech for any account flagged as a minor.

Our take

SB 6111 put an age gate on the front door of social media for all Washington users, with the minors' rules layered on top. It got a public hearing in Senate Business, Trade & Economic Development on January 29, 2026, and never came up for a committee vote. The vague "commercially reasonable" standard would have left platforms guessing how much proof of age is enough, and the safe answer for them is always more ID.

Timeline

  1. Died in committee when the session endedLatest

  2. Public hearing in Senate Business, Trade & Economic Development

  3. Introduced and referred to Senate Business, Trade & Economic Development

The record

Sponsor

Sen. Jesse Salomon (D-32)

Cosponsors (5)

Sen. Adrian Cortes (D-18), Sen. Marko Liias (D-21), Sen. T'wina Nobles (D-28), Sen. Rebecca Saldaña (D-37), Sen. Yasmin Trudeau (D-27)

Committee

Senate Business, Trade & Economic Development