New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) on Thursday signed two bills aimed at protecting children and teens from the harms of social media, making it the latest state to take action as the proposals Federals are still waiting for a vote.
One of the bills, the Stop Addictive Food Exploitation (SAFE) for Children Actwill require parental consent for social media companies to use “addictive feeds” driven by recommendation algorithms on children and adolescents under 18 years of age. The other, the New York Children's Data Protection Law, would limit the collection of data about minors without consent and restrict the sale of such information, but does not require age verification. That law will go into effect in a year.
States across the country have taken the lead in enacting laws to protect children online, and it's an area where both Republicans and Democrats seem to agree. While approaches differ somewhat by party, policymakers on both sides have expressed urgent interest in similar regulations to protect children online. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), for example, signed a bill into law in March requiring parental consent for children under 16 to have social media accounts. And in May, Maryland Governor Wes Moore (D) signed A sweeping privacy bill was signed into law, as was the Maryland Children's Code that prohibits the use of features intended to keep minors on social media for long periods of time, such as autoplay or spam notifications.
While federal lawmakers have introduced popular proposals like the Child Online Safety Act (KOSA), they have yet to receive votes on the floor and still face some opposition from groups who fear that resources for underrepresented groups like the LGBTQ+ community could be suffocated States have filled the void, creating a patchwork of regulations across the country that industry leaders say often makes it harder for smaller players to keep up.
“Is anyone going to hold their breath waiting for a federal solution?” Hochul asked at a celebratory news conference before the signing. “Me neither.”
Sponsors of New York's SAFE for Kids Act wrote that its purpose is to “protect children's mental health from addictive streams used by social media platforms and from sleep disruption due to late-night social media use.” . In addition to the algorithm restrictions, it would prevent platforms from sending notifications to minors between midnight and 6 a.m. without their parents' consent. The bill directs the attorney general's office to establish appropriate age verification methods and says these cannot rely solely on biometrics or government identification. The law would take effect 180 days after the Attorney General's Office rules, and the state could then fine companies $5,000 per violation.
New York Attorney General Letitia James noted the opposition from tech industry lobbyists that politicians had to overcome to pass the bills. “They threw money and we had bodies,” James said. “Bodies and bodies of parents, and parents from all over New York State, who recognize the dangers of social media.”
Although bills aiming to make children safer online have proliferated, they have also faced their share of legal challenges. A California court last year blocked that state's Age-Appropriate Design Code, which sought to address data collection about children and hold platforms more accountable for how their services could harm children. While the court said the law had important goals, it ruled that the challenge would likely prevail on the merits because the law could have a chilling effect on legal discourse. “Data and privacy protections intended to protect children from harmful content, if applied to adults, will also protect adults from that same content,” the judge wrote.
This bill is also likely to face pushback. NetChoice, an industry association that filed the lawsuit in California, has already called the SAFE for Kids Act unconstitutional. NetChoice Vice President and General Counsel Carl Szabo said in a statement that the law would “increase children's exposure to harmful content by requiring websites to order feeds chronologically, prioritizing recent posts on sensitive topics.”
Adam Kovacevich, executive director of the center-left tech industry group Chamber of Progress, warned that the SAFE for Kids Act “will face a constitutional minefield” because it deals with what speech platforms can show users. “It is a well-intentioned effort, but it aims at the wrong target,” he said in a statement. “Algorithmic curation makes teens' feeds healthier, and banning algorithms will make social media worse for teens.”
But Hochul told CBS News in an interview about the SAFE for Kids Act: “We've checked to make sure we believe it's constitutional.”
