Largely unnoticed, Utah’s new Social Media Regulation Act, passed March 24, is a law that will transform the internet.
Utah’s social media law does four big things to protect children from online harm. First, it requires social media companies verify the age of account holders and obtain the consent of a parent or guardian before anyone under 18 may maintain or open an account. Second, it prohibits strangers from direct messaging, advertising to, and collecting information from minors’ accounts. Third, the bill limits hours of access, subject to parental or guardian direction, creating a kind of curfew for social media use. Fourth and finally, it requires a social media company to provide a parent or guardians access to their child’s account.
Social media has become a massive experiment to discover what happens when screens’ ability to constantly entertain children replace traditional upbringing
The results, as every adult who has kids or works with young people knows, have been disastrous. Parents, teachers, and certainly law professors, like myself, have observed in the last decade that students in general have shorter attention spans, poorer social skills, and diminished abilities to follow sustained argument. They also seem to have an increasing sense of detachment from and disinterest in the world and others as well as a greater intellectual brittleness in engaging with new ideas.
Studies have confirmed this, finding an alarming increase in mental illness, depression, and loneliness among young people—as well as a dramatic decrease in romantic attachments. According to the CDC, almost three in five U.S. teen girls reported feeling sad or hopeless in 2021, the highest level seen in a decade. The CDC also reported nearly one in three high school girls considered suicide in 2021, a 60% increase from the decade prior. Teen depression doubled between 2010 and 2019. Emergency-room admissions for self-harm among 10- to 14-year-old girls tripled between 2009 and 2015. Many researchers, like Jean Twenge and NYU’s Jonathan Haidt blame social media use for this collapse in the wellbeing of an entire generation.
Utah’s response to this crisis, the Utah Social Media Regulation Act, gives parents tools to combat social media’s baleful effects and stands on firm legal ground. The requirement for parental consent for a child to contract with a social media company for an account is well within state power.
We see this idea already with states requiring parental consent for minors getting tattoos, obtaining a driver’s license, using a tanning facility, purchasing insurance, or signing liability waivers. Every public library I’ve ever used with my kids requires parental consent for a child’s library card.
It is true that in ACLU v. Ashcroft, the Supreme Court struck down age verification for pornography sites, but the Utah law is different. It requires verification for a minor to form an account, which is a contract—not merely visit a site.
Further, Ashcroft has not aged well. There, the Court claims that “filters are more effective than age-verification
Social media platforms have already complained that age verification would burden adult communication and limit privacy by requiring government identification to form accounts. Such so-called privacy concerns coming from the firms that have themselves done quite a lot to destroy America’s privacy is rich. Nevertheless, the bill instructs the Utah Department of Commerce to set up a menu of minimally intrusive mechanisms to enforce the age verification requirements.
The prohibition on strangers direct messaging minors and advertising to minors is on firm legal footing as well. The Supreme Court has already recognized that parents have the right to block unwanted solicitations and communications in the U.S. postal service that could be injurious to their children. Fundamentally, there is no First Amendment right to communicate with children against their parents’ wishes. Utah employs the same logic, if parents can prevent a mailer from sending solicitations through the U.S. mails to their kids consistent with the First Amendment, then it may limit online communications.
Limiting hours of access, subject to a parent’s direction mirrors state laws on curfews, as well as those requiring parental consent for children being in certain public places at a late hour. The time limitations also mirror broadcast restrictions, still in effect, on indecent broadcasting.
Simply put, the Utah social media law restores to parents their rightful authority to control who talks to, communicates with, and educates their children. The Supreme Court time and time again in cases such as Pierce v. Society of Sisters, has recognized this authority as central to our democracy.
The Utah law also presents tests to numerous powerful groups in our democracy: parents and Big Tech lobbyists, libertarian policy wonks, and, above all, the United States Supreme Court of the United States. Do parents have the will to insist on the right to raise their kids without interference from Big Tech corporations? Do the D.C. libertarian policy wonks become mere corporate apologists–or will they acknowledge that parents have the inalienable right to raise their kids?
Lastly, Utah’s social media law will likely test the Supreme Court justices. Much of their jurisprudence has relied on the First Amendment, in ways some critics have found thoughtless, to empower corporations to “express” themselves. Its early internet decisions in ACLU v. Reno and ACLU v. Ashcroft invited the internet platforms to make social media’s addictive rhythms, constant surveillance, and the pornography it often delivers a regular feature of our children’s lives. When the Court reviews the Utah law–and it likely will–the justices will have a greatly needed chance to reconsider.
Adam Candeub served as the Acting Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Telecommunications and Information and Deputy Associate Attorney General in the Trump Administration. He is currently a professor of law at Michigan State University, where his writing has been cited by Justice Clarence Thomas in Supreme Court arguments.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.