State lawmakers pass bill limiting social media feeds for children

Lawmakers on the final day of the General Assembly passed a bill to regulate how minors interact with social media and other online platforms.

The Children’s Online Social Media Safety Act, House Bill 5511, aims to prevent children under the age of 18 from being exposed to harmful content and addictive features by requiring social media companies to confirm a user’s age through the device’s operating system.

The bill doesn’t prevent children from downloading or using social media apps, or place age limits on their use.

Instead, during device setup, parents would set the child’s age, which would adjust certain design features in apps such as algorithmic feeds, the visibility of the child’s profile and what media can be shown to them.

Gov. JB Pritzker proposed the bill during his February budget address, and he celebrated its passage on Monday.

“I am proud the Illinois General Assembly passed the Children’s Online Social Media Safety Act, marking an important milestone in our efforts to improve kids’ safety and privacy online, mitigate the harmful effects of social media on mental and physical health, and prevent financial scamming,” Pritzker said in a statement.

Efforts to pass some kind of measure limiting children’s social media use in Illinois have been ongoing for years.

“This legislation is about recognizing a simple reality: children are not miniature adults,” said Sen. Willie Preston, a Democrat from Chicago and the bill’s sponsor. “These platforms invest billions of dollars into capturing attention, maximizing engagement, keeping users online for as long as possible. When that system is directed at developing minds, the consequences will be and have proven to be devastating and sadly irreversible.”

The bill previously passed the House in April with a bipartisan vote of 82-27. The Senate version, which passed unanimously Monday, mainly increased privacy protections for minors and altered definitions to target the most harmful platforms.

“While this legislation is not perfect, lawmakers cannot continue waiting for the perfect solution while technology continues to evolve around us,” Sen. Sue Rezin, a Republican from Morris, said in an emailed statement.

She helped work on some of the bill’s language and has advocated for youth social media protections for years.

What’s in the bill

The bill prohibits social media companies from using a minor’s viewing history or data stored on the device to determine what shows up in their feeds.

Instead, feeds for minors will only be allowed to show information the user requested or searched for, or was posted by a creator the user follows. Youths will also be able to see media that is a direct, private message to them.

Under the bill, platforms would be required to establish some default privacy settings for minors, shield a minor’s precise location and limit digital currency transactions. Social sites and apps would also be prohibited from sending notifications between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.

The Illinois attorney general’s office would enforce the law, which takes effect in 2028, if signed. Violators would be liable for fines up to $2,500 for each child for unintentional violations and up to $7,500 per child for intentional violations.

Lobbyists for tech companies raised concerns that the bill may violate the First Amendment and warned that it will likely face lawsuits. But the governor’s office said in a Saturday committee that the bill’s language is modeled after legislation that have survived court challenges in other states.

Rep. Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz, the House sponsor, said she doubted social media companies would ever be completely on board.

“I’m not sure we’re ever going to get complete neutrality from social media companies that are going to be asked to comply with this act in order to keep our kids safe from addictive algorithms that are frankly designed to keep them glued to these devices,” the Glenview Democrat on the House floor. “But this is an incredibly important measure to address the most dangerous features of these devices, which is that they’re designed to be addictive to children.”

Nationwide effort

As of April, at least 19 states have laws regulating social media for children on the books, though many have been blocked or tied up in court because tech companies claim they violate the First Amendment and privacy rights.

In March, a New Mexico jury determined that Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, knew the platform harmed children’s mental health and concealed information about child sexual exploitation on its platforms. The company was fined $375 million for violating New Mexico’s youth social media law.