Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg went to Congress on Wednesday, January 31, with a clear vision - that Apple and Google could play a bigger role in keeping children off platforms or ensuring they have age-appropriate experiences on social apps.

Zuckerberg says Apple and Google’s app stores could be the “easiest” and “right” place to check the age of child users or let parents verify themselves, rather than have to upload IDs to many different apps.

He adds that if the two giants’ app stores already require parental consent when children make payments in apps, “it should be pretty trivial to pass a law that requires them to make it so that parents have control any time a child downloads an app and offers consent of that”.

Senator Amy Klobuchar responds that such processes aren’t simple enough for parents - and the courtrooms and halls of Congress offer them a smoother path for protecting their kids online.

A short interaction between Senator Mike Lee and Mark Zuckerberg just caused some members of the crowd to burst into laughter.

Zuckerberg said: "My understanding is we don't allow sexually explicit content for anyone."

"How is that going?" Lee responds, causing claps and laughs from the audience.

Zuckerberg goes on to say about 99% of content removed is identified by AI and he believes Meta is an industry leader in this area.