NC lawmakers push to limit kids' ability to access social media platforms

North Carolina lawmakers are trying to cut down on kids' ability to access social media with a proposal that would set an age limit for when they can create accounts.

"If you go out and you Google and you look anything up about the positive results of kids being on social media, you will find none. In fact, you will find all kinds of things that have come from that — mental health issues, bullying and so on and so forth," Jeff Zenger, a Lewisville Republican who is among the bill's primary sponsors, said Tuesday.

House Bill 301 would ban social media companies from letting anyone younger than 14 years old open an account, while requiring parental consent for accounts belonging to 14- and 15-year-olds.

Platforms violating the proposed bill could face a lawsuit from the N.C. Department of Justice with penalties of up to $50,000 for each violation, while account holders who are younger than the limits set forth in the law would be able to sue to collect damages of up to $10,000 if they can prove a platform knowingly or recklessly allowed access.

In December 2023, UNC-Chapel Hill developmental neuroscientist Eva Telzer told the state's Child Fatality Task Force that 78% of 13- to 17-year-olds reported checking their devices hourly, while 46% said they were checking almost constantly.

Nearly all adolescents reported spending more time on social media than they intended, according to Telzer's research, and half said they had a hard time engaging with day-to-day activities if they were away from their screens.

Legislative staff said the bill had been tweaked to clarify that its provisions didn't apply to a number of online services. Those would include customer support forums, e-commerce sites, online shopping and some video games.

Those changes came after the N.C. Retail Merchants Association raised concerns, Zenger said during the committee meeting.

Rep. Deb Butler, a Wilmington Democrat, raised a number of concerns about the legislation. Those included the mechanics of verifying a would-be user's and how parental consent would be gathered.

"This is going to be a little more difficult to implement than I think we even can begin to recognize," Butler said.

Most major social media platforms have set their minimum age for account holders at 13 years old. Those include Facebook, TikTok and YouTube.

Zenger said verifying ages shouldn't be a concern because it is already used to access gambling websites or buy alcohol online. And since 2024, those wishing to access pornographic websites in North Carolina have needed to verify their age.

"This is not cutting new ground. The age verification is already out there for a number of things," Zenger said.

The bill also requires any third-party age verification service to destroy personal identifying information once the age has been confirmed, keep that information anonymous and protect that information with "reasonable security practices." A verification service that fails to follow those rules could face a lawsuit from the state with penalties of up to $50,000 per violation.

Other states' approaches

Other states, Butler said, have chosen to focus on raising kids' digital literacy by building safe internet practices into their school curriculum instead of purely prohibiting access to social media sites. The Wilmington representative warned that only having a ban could lead kids to seek out "darker places of the Internet."

"There may be an educational piece we need to dovetail with it. Maybe yours is a short-term way to address this complicated issue, but the long-term approach, again, for internet safety and digital literacy is something that we ought to take a look at," Butler said.

At least nine states have passed similar legislation. In Georgia, for example, a law passed last year requires parental consent for anyone under 16 years old to open an account. Tennessee's law is similar, but it would require parental consent for anyone younger than 18 years old.

A number of organizations focused on free speech have raised concerns about federal bans on kids' access to social media. The crux of their argument is that the activity happening on social media platforms is speech, which is protected by the First Amendment.

Reighlah Collins, policy counsel for the ACLU of North Carolina, made some of those arguments to the House committee.

"All of us residents, including minors, have First Amendment rights to access information and express themselves, so you can't wholesale kick them off social media. Today, the Internet is our nation's primary marketplace of ideas," Collins said.

The House Judiciary Committee voted in favor of the legislation Tuesday, with Butler casting the lone dissenting vote. It will next move to the House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development and then House Rules before getting a vote by the full House. From there, it would head over to the Senate.