Bipartisan Bill Would Require Parental Consent For Minors Who Use Social Media, Outright Ban For Young Children

Senate Introduces Bill to Protect Kids on Social Media

Four members of the Senate have introduced a new bill called the Protecting Kids on Social Media Act, which aims to ban children under 13 from using social media and require parental consent for those under 18. The bill also seeks to prevent the use of algorithmic content recommendations for minors to reduce the addictive nature of social media. The bill is sponsored by Senators Brian Schatz (D-HI), Tom Cotton (R-AR), Chris Murphy (D-CT), and Katie Britt (R-AL).

Senator Schatz stated, “The growing evidence is clear: social media is making kids more depressed and wreaking havoc on their mental health. While kids are suffering, social media companies are profiting. This needs to stop. Our bill will help us stop the growing social media health crisis among kids by setting a minimum age and preventing companies from using algorithms to automatically feed them addictive content based on their personal information.”

The Protecting Kids on Social Media Act would require social media platforms to verify the age of individuals who are account holders and confirm that a minor user’s parents have explicitly granted permission for their child to use the platform. Senator Britt added, “The only beneficiaries of the status quo are social media companies’ bottom lines and the foreign adversaries cheering them on. I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to enact the commonsense, age-appropriate solutions needed to tackle this generational challenge.”

The bill comes as lawmakers continue to push for the ban or restriction of TikTok, a social media platform controlled by Chinese technology company ByteDance. TikTok has become the most widely used platform among American minors, with children and teenagers spending an average of 99 minutes per day on the application as of 2021. Social media firms such as Meta have scrambled to add vertical video components to their applications in response.

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If you want to stay up-to-date on the latest news and developments, click here to get the Daily Wire app. TikTok has announced that it will establish default time restrictions for minor users in an effort to reduce young people’s time spent on the platform. Users under 18 will be subject to a default daily screen time limit of 60 minutes, after which they will be prompted to enter a passcode to continue watching, requiring them to make an active decision to extend that time. They will also be encouraged to create a daily screen time limit if they spend more than 100 minutes on the platform.

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