Legislatures in more than half of the country targeted young people's use of social media this year, with many of the proposals blocking adults' ability to access the same sites.
Courts blocked several of these laws for violating the First Amendment-though some may go into effect later this year.
EFF asked Governor Newsom to veto that bill before it was signed into law, despite its good intentions in seeking to protect the privacy and well-being of children.
Fourteen months after California passed the AADC, it feels like a dam has broken: we've seen dangerous social media regulations for young people introduced across the country, and passed in several states, including Utah, Arkansas, and Texas.
The law prohibits social media companies from providing accounts to a Utah minor, unless they have the express consent of a parent or guardian.
We identified at least four reasons to oppose the law, many of which apply to other states' social media regulations.
First, young people have a First Amendment right to information that the law infringes upon.
Second, the law dangerously requires parental surveillance of young peoples' accounts, harming their privacy and free speech.
Third, the law endangers the privacy of all Utah users, as it requires many sites to collect and analyze private information, like government issued identification, for every user, to verify ages.
Fourth, the law interferes with the broader public's First Amendment right to receive information by requiring that all users in Utah tie their accounts to their age, and ultimately, their identity, and will lead to fewer people expressing themselves, or seeking information online.
The law passed despite these problems, as did Utah's H.B. 311, which creates liability for social media companies should they, in the view of Utah lawmakers, create services that are addictive to minors.
Arkansas passed a similar law to Utah's S.B. 152 in April, which requires users of social media to prove their age or obtain parental permission to create social media accounts.
A federal court blocked the Arkansas law in September, ruling that the age-verification provisions violated the First Amendment because they burdened everyone's ability to access lawful speech online.
Texas, in June, passed a regulation similar to the Arkansas law, which would ban anyone under 18 from having a social media account unless they receive consent from parents or guardians.
The law is scheduled to take effect in September 2024.
Given the strong constitutional protections for people, including children, to access information without having to identify themselves, federal courts have blocked the laws in Arkansas and California.
EFF has warned that such laws were bad policy and would not withstand court challenges, in large part because applying online regulations specifically to young people often forces sites to use age verification, which comes with a host of problems, legal and otherwise.
In short, comprehensive data privacy legislation would address the massive collection and processing of personal data that is the root cause of many problems online, and it is far easier to write data privacy laws that are constitutional.
Of course, states were not alone in their attempt to regulate social media for young people.
We'll be there, continuing to fight against misguided laws that do little to protect kids while doing much to invade everyone's privacy and speech rights.
This Cyber News was published on www.eff.org. Publication date: Sat, 30 Dec 2023 16:13:34 +0000