Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) has introduced a bill requiring minors under 16 to obtain parental consent before creating a social media account.
The Initial Announcement
Last week, Sen. Gallego spoke with ABC15 about the negative effects of social media on young minds, saying, "These social media companies are basically mining our kids for information, for profit, and feeding them garbage, digital garbage. It's starting to affect them; it affects grades, it affects mentality, it affects self-esteem."
He further wrote on social media that "kids are on these apps for hours and it's showing. Grades slipping, confidence shot, and it's not an accident. These platforms mine kids for data and don't care what it costs their mental health. We have to protect our kids."
So What Does the Bill Do?
Sen. Gallego's Parental Approval for Youth Social Media Act forbids the creation of social media accounts by users under the age of 16 by default unless a parent or legal guardian gives authorization.
Additionally, social media companies would be required to provide parent-supervised accounts and require age verification from users. Exemptions apply to emails, texting, educational platforms, video conferencing services, and online gaming, where social interaction is incidental to the primary function.
What Gallego is Saying
"Every study tells us the same thing: social media is poisoning our kids' developing minds," the Arizona Senator said in his press release. "When unsupervised online, they can be exposed to explicit material, recruited by drug or sex traffickers, or cyber bullied. Meanwhile, Big Tech is profiting off of that very screen time. It's more than time we set a federal policy to protect our children."
Previous Bills Reining in Big Tech
In November, Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ), introduced the Algorithm Accountability Act, which amends Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to impose a duty of care on social media companies, requiring these firms to take greater care in designing, testing, and training their algorithms.
