Social media access for minors may look different next year as lawmakers and agencies are looking for ways to make the internet safer for children.
Concerns have been raised over the past several years about the potentially damaging effects of social media on children, which promped some states, like Utah and Virginia, to debate bills this year requiring age verification and other measures to limit minors’ access to social platforms. In 2024, more lawmakers in multiple states have said that they are planning to introduce legislation on this issue. (RELATED: Top Social Media Companies Made Billions From Ads For Minors: REPORT)
In New York, lawmakers are considering a bill that would only allow minors to see a chronological feed from users they already follow by default, according to an October press release from state Attorney General Letitia James, who endorsed the legislation. The bill would give parents the ability to opt out of allowing their children on social media between the hours of 12 a.m. and 6 a.m. and control how long minor users can use social media per day.
On Jan. 15, a law is set to go into effect in Ohio that requires social media companies to get parental consent before a user under 16 can create an account, according to Spectrum News 1.
Elected officials in Maryland, California and Pennsylvania are also planning to introduce legislation in 2024 addressing concerns over child labor online and financial compensation for minor influencers on social media, according to NBC News. Democratic state Rep. Torren Ecker told NBC that he is working on a bill regarding online child labor and plans to introduce the legislation next year.
Several families and parents have been sued and even criminally charged for exploiting their children as online influencers. Additionally, the Mayo Clinic says risks of too much online exposure for teens can result in depression, anxiety, bullying and difficulty sleeping.
Researchers from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health have said that teens are often bombarded with “unrealistic expectations” and that this can be “destructive to identity development and self-image” for young social media users whose brains aren’t fully developed.
A photo taken on November 17, 2023, shows the logo of US online social media and social networking service X – formerly Twitter – on a smartphone screen in Frankfurt am Main, western Germany. (Photo by Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP) (Photo by KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP via Getty Images)
The Federal Trade Commission also proposed new rules in December that would change how companies use targeted advertising with minors on social media and expand the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, according to The New York Times. The new rules, if passed, would give companies a shorter amount of time that they could keep a minor’s data collected from online usage, and limit the collection of data from educational apps and companies, requiring consent from the child’s school.
A new report revealed that social media companies had made almost $11 billion in 2022 from advertisements for American users under the age of 18. Over $2 billion of the revenue was made from users under 12 and the remaining $8.6 billion from children aged 13 to 17.
Adam Candeub, an attorney and director of the Intellectual Property, Information & Communications Law Program at Michigan State University, told the Daily Caller News Foundation that while he supports the FTC’s proposed changes and the laws protecting child influencers, he sees more benefit from age verification and parental consent laws.
“Children can’t form contracts without their parent’s consent. Kids can’t get medical treatment, they can’t get tattoos, they can’t buy life insurance and all sorts of things,” Candeub said. “Social media companies do offer you terms of service, which are essentially a contract. You give away your your legal rights to your information, to your copyrights, your ability to sue and I think the point is that you can’t do that without parental consent because only parents are competent to make those decisions. And that has nothing to do with the First Amendment, it has to do with the basic presumption in American law that parents get to decide what’s best for kids.”
Candeub noted that conservatives are often hesitant to restrict people’s freedoms, but pointed to warnings from U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy in May, who urged lawmakers to start taking a “safety first” approach to legislation regarding social media.
“With the state of our kids, take time to do something about it, or we’re facing a serious, it sounds a little bit exaggerated, civilizational collapse and creating a generation of very emotionally injured children,” Candeub said.
However, there are concerns among conservatives and pro-tech groups that laws intended to safeguard children could violate constitutional rights.
There is a lawsuit by NetChoice, an internet trade association, against Utah over a law requiring age verification and parental consent for social media use by minors.
“Utah’s government took a path that seizes control of the online experience from parents, disregards the importance of education, sidelines the state’s vibrant creator economy, compromises data security and violates constitutional rights,” Chris Marchese, director of the NetChoice Litigation Center, said in a press release at the time.
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