• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, February 26, 2025

Utah Attorney General Derek Brown is asking an appeals court to lift a block on a law that requires social media platforms to disable “addictive” features on minors' accounts -- including push notifications, content that plays automatically, and the ability to send messages to users who aren't in the minors' networks.

The law advances Utah's “compelling interest in protecting its children’s mental health and privacy,” Attorney General Derek Brown argues in an appellate brief filed Tuesday with the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Utah Minor Protection in Social Media Act, passed last year, repealed and replaced a 2023 law that would have prohibited social media companies from allowing minors under 18 to have accounts without parental permission, and banned the companies from serving ads to minors.

The new law, which had been slated to take effect last October, also has provisions requiring social platforms to verify users' ages and restrict the visibility of minors' accounts.

The tech industry group NetChoice sued to block the law, arguing it unconstitutionally restricts speech of teens under 18 as well as platforms. The measure would leave minors “unable to interact with elected officials on X, share their artistic expression on Instagram, post their athletic highlights on YouTube, or ask for help with their homework on Nextdoor,” NetChoice argued.

In September, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Shelby ruled that the statute likely violates the First Amendment and blocked enforcement.

“The court recognizes the state's earnest desire to protect young people from the novel challenges associated with social media use,” Shelby wrote.

“But owing to the First Amendment's paramount place in our democratic system, even well-intentioned legislation that regulates speech based on content must satisfy a tremendously high level of constitutional scrutiny,” he continued.

Shelby added that Utah officials failed to demonstrate that social media was harming teens' mental health, adding that a 2023 United States Surgeon General advisory on the topic “offers a much more nuanced view of the link between social media use and negative mental health impacts.”

That report said social media “may have benefits for some children and adolescents,” but could also pose a risk of harm, and concluded that more research is needed.

Other observers have separately questioned whether social media use actually causes psychological illnesses. For instance, the National Eating Disorders Association has said social media can “contribute” to an eating disorder, but doesn't generally cause one, according to The New York Times.

Brown claims in the state's brief that excessive social media use “has caused an alarming spike in adverse mental health outcomes among teenagers.”

“The state has an important and substantial interest in protecting its children’s privacy and mental health,” he argues.

He adds that the law is “narrowly tailored” to that interest, noting that it “only requires social media companies to disable the addictive user engagement features for minors and get parental permission to change privacy settings.”

“Minors can still have social media accounts and post about whatever they want,” he writes.

NetChoice is expected to respond to Brown's arguments by May 27.