• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, January 30, 2025

Federal lawmakers this week reintroduced a bipartisan bill that would prohibit social-media platforms from allowing children under 13 to create accounts, and also prohibit platforms from algorithmically recommending content to teens under 18.

Kids Off Social Media Act, put forward by Senators Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut), and Katie Britt (R-Alabama), additionally would force schools to limit social media on their networks.

The bill's sponsors contend that the measure will help protect young people, arguing there is “a strong relationship between social media use and poor mental health, especially among children.”

The measure has drawn the support of organizations including Public Citizen, National Organization for Women and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

But other advocacy groups argue the bill infringes on young people's rights.

“Banning children from social media platforms is completely antithetical to free expression and open access to information,” Allegro Smith, government affairs policy advocate at Public Knowledge, stated this week.

The lawmakers introduced a similar bill last year, but it didn't gain traction.

The federal Children's Privacy Protection Act already prohibits operators of websites and apps from knowingly collecting data from users under 13, without parental consent, but doesn't require companies to ban those users.

Lawmakers in California and New York have passed laws restricting platforms from recommending content to minors, but it's not clear whether those laws will survive court challenges.

The tech industry group NetChoice recently sued to strike down the California law, arguing it violates teens' First Amendment right to receive information and web publishers' right to curate posts. This week, a federal appellate court temporarily blocked enforcement of that law.