Some things a Rhode Islander can do for the first time, legally, when they turn 18: Vote for president, visit a casino, or smoke a pack of cigarettes.
A bill introduced by Rep. Tina Spears, a Charlestown Democrat, in the Rhode Island House of Representatives last week would add “use social media” to that list of coming-of-age privileges.
“What it really does is it prohibits direct messaging on accounts for these youth who are under 18,” Spears said while introducing her bill Thursday, “They will not be able to use the platforms as they are currently structured today.”
Spears reminded her colleagues on the Rhode Island House Committee on Innovation, Internet and Technology that the U.S. Surgeon General successfully curtailed smoking rates over time, and the same office recently cast youths’ social media usage in the same light.
“The Surgeon General states, ‘We cannot conclude that social media is sufficiently safe for children and adolescents,’ which tells me as a policymaker and lawmaker, that we should be taking action to ensure that we are protecting our youth,” Spears told the committee, citing that youth often come into contact with self-harm content online.
Spears’ bill, The Rhode Island Social Media Regulation Act is a comprehensive effort to age-restrict social media usage and would require global social media platforms with more than five million users to verify the age of any Rhode Island user. Minors would not be able to make or use an account without their parent or guardian’s consent, and users would have two weeks to verify their identities.
Spears posed the bill as a public health effort as well as an attempt to shut off the illicit channels and activities young people can encounter in sparsely regulated online spaces.
“We do not allow drug trafficking, human trafficking, sextortion — any of those actions we do not allow in public venues in any way. Nor should we allow it on a social media platform,” the lawmaker said.
In addition to the restrictions on DMs, parents would have access to their children’s accounts, and minors would not be able to access social media sites between 10:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m. without parental consent.
Pure direct messaging apps “where messages are shared between the sender and the recipient, only visible to the sender and the recipient,” as the bill text puts it, would presumably exclude services like Signal and WhatsApp from the bill’s reach. But it’s unclear whether something like Discord, which is a messaging app with social-media-esque aspects, would be subject to the proposed law.
Companies who violate the regulation would see a $2,500 fine per violation, and a $5,000 penalty for repeat violations. The bill imagines the Department of Business Regulation would oversee the regulatory process, although Spears told the committee, “They don’t feel they’re equipped to actually oversee this,” and have suggested pursuing other options for the regulatory framework.
There’s no equivalent bill on the Senate side currently. Spears’ bill has some slight bipartisan support, thanks to House Minority Leader Mike Chippendale of Foster signing on as a cosponsor.
‘You cannot trust what they’re doing on these, right?’
Another bill heard in the same committee meeting led by Rep. Megan Cotter, an Exeter Democrat, features five of the same sponsors as Spears’ bill. It would require companies that provide online services youth are likely to access to keep minors in mind when designing their platforms and is based on a similar law in California that passed in 2022.
“I just want to preface first that I’m in full support of Representative Spears’ bill. My bill is slightly different. If I had a choice, I would choose hers over mine, to be clear,” Cotter said with a laugh as she sat before the House committee.
Cotter said her bill derives from a parent’s love — and concern. “When we first have a child, you get your first car seat for your child, go down to the police station…[and] make sure you’ve put it in your car safely,” Cotter said.
Then Cotter held up her phone and added, “Then they get to teenage years, and we give them one of these, and you cannot trust what they’re doing on these, right? We kind of know there are no guardrails for them.”
Cotter said she “expected the tech lobbyists” to lobby against her bill.
After Cotter presented her bill, tech committee Chair Rep. Jacquelyn Baginski, a Cranston Democrat, said, “Mom’s intuition should never be ignored. I think some of those big tech lobbyists you mentioned, I don’t know, maybe they’re in the crowd.”
No tech industry lobbyists testified at the hearing, but a few did submit written letters of opposition to Spears’ bill — all of them attached the names of national lobbying outfits, including NetChoice and the Chamber of Progress, the latter a trade group started by a former public policy executive at Google.
Brianna January, the Chamber of Progress’s director of state and local government relations for the northeast, argued against the bill on several fronts in her written testimony, pointing to potential damage it would wreak on users and platforms alike. Websites may opt out entirely of the age verification process to avoid the hassle, January wrote, and “may turn entirely to children’s programming and eliminate all content for adults, turning YouTube into YouTube kids for everyone.”
There could also be consequences for already marginalized teens who rely on social media and messaging for support and community, January wrote, especially LGBTQ+ youth who may “face unsafe or abusive home environments,” she wrote.
Concerns about privacy and the safety of young users also appeared in live testimony against Spears’ bill from Madalyn McGunagle, a policy associate at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Rhode Island. McGunagle argued that social media can be “where a child finds social support that they don’t have at home, as well as a community and like-minded peers,” as well as a venue for political and civic engagement.
“Does the ACLU have a position on criminal activity and exposure to youth on these platforms? Do you possess a position on that?” Spears asked McGunagle.
“Not off the top of my head,” McGunagle said. “I would be happy to look into that for you.”
Both Spears’ and Cotter’s bills were held for further study, as is standard practice at an initial hearing. Both bills would also go into effect on Jan. 1, 2026, if enacted.
Age gates popping up across the states
A number of state legislatures have had success in cracking down on teenager’s social media use and have instituted similar bills. As of June 2024, 10 states had enacted such legislation, according to The Age Verification Providers Association, a trade group.
Enforcement can still be difficult, as detailed in a 2024 article by PC Mag, given that age verification methods — from photo IDs to facial recognition — each have drawbacks. Legal challenges to age-verification laws have been plentiful, although judges’ interpretations of verification laws’ legality varies. In March, a U.S. judge in Florida struck down tech companies’ challenge to a block on platforms’ use of “addictive” features with minors, The Florida Phoenix reported. But in Texas, a judge sided with the tech industry, temporarily blocking provisions of a law regulating minors’ access to certain kinds of content, calling it “unconstitutionally vague,” according to The Texas Tribune.
Measures to shape how and what kids access online also exist at the congressional level, with a piece of legislation called the Kids Off Social Media Act, introduced by Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii in January and buoyed by bipartisan support. Its cosponsors include Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Katie Britt of Alabama, as well as Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Sen. Angus King of Maine, an Independent.
Potentially more enforceable are bills that latch onto teenagers’ internet use at a location already regulated: school. At least 19 states had cell phone restrictions in school buildings as of June 2024, Education Week reported.
On Wednesday, the Rhode Island Senate Committee on Education heard a bill by Sen. Melissa Murray, a Woonsocket Democrat, that would require school districts to set cell phone usage policies for their schools. Cell phone bans in public schools have become popular tools to mitigate waning classroom attention spans, with statewide bans seen in places as ideologically diverse as California and Florida, Stateline reported in February. The bill saw a healthy amount of support in written testimonies to the Senate committee.
This story was originally published by the Rhode Island Current.
