Utah became the first state on Thursday to sign into law legislation trying to limit teens’ access to social media sites.
Republican Governor Spencer Cox signed a pair of measures aimed at limiting when and where children can use social media and preventing companies from luring children to visit websites.
Other states, such as Arkansas, Texas, Ohio and Louisiana have similar bills in the works.
The law requires companies to grant parents access to their children’s accounts, place a curfew on social media use from 10:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m., as well as age verification for All Utah residents want to use social media.
In addition to parental consent provisions, social media companies will likely have to design new features to comply with parts of the law that ban ads to minors and display them in the results. search results. Search and targeted advertising are the two main revenue generating mechanisms for many social media companies.
Cox cited more research globally that “shows that there is a causal relationship between these poor outcomes, these poor mental health outcomes, and time spent on social media.” assemblies and these applications.
“We remain very optimistic that we will be able to pass not only here in Wyoming but nationally a law that dramatically changes our children’s relationship with social media apps,” he said. This is very destructive.”
The move comes as parents and lawmakers become increasingly concerned about children and teenagers’ use of the social network and how platforms like TikTok, Instagram and others are affecting the mental health of young people.
Utah’s law was signed on the same day TikTok’s CEO testified before Congress about TikTok’s impacts on youth mental health, among other things.
The law will go into effect in March 2024, and Cox has previously said that he anticipates social media companies will take it to court.
Lobbyists in the tech industry were quick to denounce the move as unconstitutional.
“Utah will soon require online services to collect sensitive information about youth and families, not only for age verification but also to verify parental relationships, such as IDs and birth certificates issued by parents. government level, putting their private data at risk of being breached,” said Nicole Saad Bembridge, deputy director at NetChoice, a technology lobbying group. “These laws also violate Utah’s First Amendment rights to share and access speech online—an effort that was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1997.”
