• by Wendy Davis , Yesterday

The tech industry group NetChoice is pressing its bid to block a new Virginia law requiring social platforms to verify users' ages and prohibit teens under 16 from accessing social media for more than one hour a day without parental consent.

Virginia lawmakers passed the statute, SB 854, earlier this year. Unless blocked, tech platforms that violate the law could face enforcement actions as soon as January 31.

NetChoice -- which counts Google, Meta, Snap and other big tech companies as members -- is challenging the law as unconstitutional, arguing that it violates minors' First Amendment right to access speech.

"SB 854 restricts wide swaths of First Amendment activity -- including on many websites that have no conceivable connection to any of the alleged harms the Commonwealth purports to target," the group writes in papers filed Thursday with U.S. District Court Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles, a Biden appointee, in Alexandria.

"Minors must obtain parental consent before spending more than an hour a day watching Fourth Circuit arguments on YouTube, debating politics on Dreamwidth, or discussing college applications on College Confidential," the group continues, adding that the Supreme Court ruled in 2011 that minors under 18 have a constitutional right to speak, and be spoken to, without their parents' permission.

Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, who is defending the law, characterized it as a "reasonable and common-sense" approach to combating "excessive" social media use.

"This law targets the amount of time that children spend on addictive feeds and aims to reduce the likelihood that social media use will disrupt activities like school or sleep," his office argued in papers filed last year. "The harms from social media, as with other addictive behaviors, have been directly linked to the amount of time spent on the platform; the more time spent scrolling, the worse the mental health outcomes."

NetChoice counters in its new papers that the government can't justify the restriction on speech by arguing that social media is "addictive."

"While the government may take many steps to protect minors from harm (including alleged harms related to social media), restricting all minors from accessing mediums of expression based on concerns that some minors may find them too 'addicting' is not an available option," NetChoice writes.

"If the government could really restrict access to mediums of expression that it deems too engaging, then it is hard to see why that power would be limited to restricting access to 'social media,'" the group adds.

"Under Virginia’s position, states could prohibit minors from spending more than one hour a day playing alluring video games on Xbox Live, watching engaging cartoons on Disney+, reading page-turning novels on Nook, or listening to captivating podcasts on Spotify -- all based on a prediction that such speech is “addicting” and harmful."

Giles is expected to hold a hearing on January 16.