Florida enacts tough social media law barring children under 14 from holding accounts
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Monday signed a bill barring children younger than 14 from holding social media accounts and only allowing 14- and 15-year-olds to open accounts with consent from their parents.
Under the legislation, accounts already held by teens aged 14 and 15 must be erased unless a parent or guardian consents to their remaining active.
The bill mandates that sexually explicit websites verify users’ ages to keep minors from “accessing sites that are inappropriate for children,” according to a DeSantis press release.
“Being buried in those devices all day is not the best way to grow up—it’s not the best way to get a good education,” DeSantis said at a Monday event celebrating the bill’s enactment.
While the Florida law doesn’t identify specific social media platforms, it homes in on sites with notification alerts and autoplay videos, which proponents say promote compulsive engagement.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other civil liberties groups have fiercely opposed such laws, saying they censor children, infringe on their online privacy, and create a de facto requirement for all internet users to supply identification to prove their age, itself a privacy violation.
A string of states have attempted such laws with many facing opposition and litigation from big tech, arguing the mandates are unconstitutional.
Under the federal Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which has momentum in Congress but has not been brought to a vote, children under the age of 17 would need to obtain parental consent to use social media and children under 13 would be banned from using it altogether.
Florida House Speaker Paul Renner, a Republican, sponsored the bill and said in a statement after its passage that it would protect minors from the internet, which he called a “dark alley for our children where predators target them.”
He also said social media has fostered higher depression and suicide rates.
“Florida leads the way in protecting children online as states across the country fight to address these dangers,” Renner said.
The law will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2025.
Suzanne Smalley
is a reporter covering privacy, disinformation and cybersecurity policy for The Record. She was previously a cybersecurity reporter at CyberScoop and Reuters. Earlier in her career Suzanne covered the Boston Police Department for the Boston Globe and two presidential campaign cycles for Newsweek. She lives in Washington with her husband and three children.