Children and Media

Texas lawmakers approved a bill that aims to regulate teenagers' ability to use social media platforms. Unless vetoed by Governor Greg Abbott (R-TX), the Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment Act (HB 18) will require social platforms to verify users' ages, and allow parents to access accounts of children under 18. The bill not only prohibits social platforms from serving “harmful” content to minors but also requires platforms to deploy filtering technology to screen out such material.

This advisory describes the current evidence on the impacts of social media on the mental health of children and adolescents. It states that we cannot conclude social media is sufficiently safe for children and adolescents and outlines immediate steps we can take to mitigate the risk of harm to children and adolescents. Key takeaways:

Studies exploring the relationship between technology in the classroom and students’ outcomes have yielded mixed results. We contribute to the debate by examining the effects of broadband subsidies to schools on school performance measures in Florida. Specifically, using a nearly universal panel of Florida schools in the period 2016-2019, we assess the effect of federal broadband subsidies to schools via the E-Rate program on school grades.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) proposed changes to the agency’s 2020 privacy order with Facebook after alleging that the company has failed to fully comply with the order, misled parents about their ability to control with whom their children communicated through its Messenger Kids app, and misrepresented the access it provided some app developers to private user data. As part of the proposed changes, Meta, which changed its name from Facebook in October 2021, would be prohibited from profiting from data it collects, including through its virtual reality products, from users under the a

Federal efforts to pass children’s online safety protections have languished amid disagreements between House and Senate leaders about which proposals to rally around.

In order to visit some websites, internet users Louisiana have to provide proof that they were at least 18. That’s because Louisiana lawmakers had passed legislation last year requiring publishers of online material that could be “harmful to minors” to verify that their users were adults.

Senators Brian Schatz (D-HI), Tom Cotton (R-AR), Chris Murphy (D-CT), and Katie Britt (R-AL) introduced new legislation to help protect children from the harmful impacts of social media. The Protecting Kids on Social Media Act would set a minimum age of 13 to use social media apps and would require parental consent for 13 through17 year-olds.  The bill would also prevent social media companies from feeding content using algorithms to users under the age of 18. The Protecting Kids on Social Media Act would:

The European Commission adopted the first designation decisions under the Digital Services Act (DSA), designating 17 Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) and 2 Very Large Online Search Engines (VLOSEs) that reach at least 45 million monthly active users. The countdown has started for them to fully comply with the special obligations that the Digital Services Act imposes on them (August, 25 2023).

Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL) reintroduced the Protecting the Information of our Vulnerable Adolescents, Children, and Youth Act, or the Kids (PRIVACY) Act, which would update the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act with safeguards to keep children and teenagers safe online and hold Big Tech companies who surveil and target children accountable. The bill includes strong provisions to build on COPPA's strengths and expand privacy protections for children and teenagers as well as directives to operators to make the best interests of children and teenagers a primary design consideration.