Utah became the first state Thursday to sign into law legislation that attempts to limit teenagers\u2019 access to social media sites. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Republican Gov. Spencer Cox signed a pair of measures that aim to limit when and where children can use social media and stop companies from luring kids to the sites. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Other states, such as Arkansas, Texas, Ohio and Louisiana have similar bills in the works. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The laws requires companies to give parents access to their children\u2019s accounts, puts a curfew on social media use from 10:30 p.m. to 6:30 a,m. as well as age verification for all Utah residents who want to use social media. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition to the parental consent provisions, social media companies would likely have to design new features to comply with parts of the law to prohibit promoting ads to minors and showing them in search results. Search and targeted advertising are two key revenue-generating mechanisms for many social media companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cox cited more studies globally \u201cshowing that is causation between these poor outcomes, these poor mental health outcomes, and time spent on these social media and these apps. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe remain very optimistic that we will be able to pass not just here in the state of Utah but across the country legislation that significantly changes the relationship of our children with these very destructive social media apps,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The move comes as parents and lawmakers are growing increasingly concerned about kids and teenagers\u2019 use of social media and how platforms like TikTok, Instagram and others are affecting young people\u2019s mental health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Utah\u2019s law was signed on thee same day TikTok\u2019s CEO testified before Congress about, among other things, TikTok\u2019s effects on teenagers\u2019 mental health<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The law will take effect in March 2024 and Cox has previously said he anticipates social media companies will challenge it in court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tech industry lobbyists quickly decried the move as unconstitutional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cUtah will soon require online services to collect sensitive information about teens and families, not only to verify ages, but to verify parental relationships, like government-issued IDs and birth certificates, putting their private data at risk of breach,\u201d said Nicole Saad Bembridge, an associate director at NetChoice, a tech lobby group. \u201cThese laws also infringe on Utahns\u2019 First Amendment rights to share and access speech online\u2014an effort already rejected by the Supreme Court in 1997.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Utah became the first state Thursday to sign into law legislation that attempts to limit teenagers\u2019 access to social media sites. Republican Gov. Spencer Cox signed a pair of measures that aim to limit when and where children can use social media and stop companies from luring kids to the sites. Other states, such as Arkansas, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":28450,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[64,50,12],"tags":[4836,9951,7744,6682,287,6693,10507,2465,11831,7396,6738,2264,12634,8394,7236,10342,12329,9792,5913,9534,6332,10917,6944,13301,8383,5807,5349,10041,1825,10236,9766,5355,7592,6081,3954,594,5140],"class_list":["post-30308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-fitness","category-technology","category-world-news","tag-access","tag-age","tag-arkansas","tag-birth","tag-children","tag-congress","tag-court","tag-cox","tag-curfew","tag-data","tag-families","tag-government","tag-health","tag-instagram","tag-kids","tag-law","tag-laws","tag-louisiana","tag-mental-health","tag-ohio","tag-online","tag-poor","tag-republican","tag-results","tag-revenue","tag-risk","tag-social-media","tag-speech","tag-supreme-court","tag-tech","tag-teens","tag-texas","tag-tiktok","tag-utah","tag-will","tag-who","tag-young"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}