A radical new bill has been signed into law by the Governor of Florida, Ron Desantis restricting social media access to children below 14 years, with several penalties attached.
The law mandates all social media accounts owned by Floridan youngsters across all platforms be deleted.
It also requires that children between the ages of 14 and 15 need parental consent to sign up for social media apps such as Instagram and Twitter.
The bill is attributed to Republican House Speaker, Paul Renner, who complained that certain features on social media such as notification alerts and autoplay videos encourage compulsive viewing that prompts children to stay on the platforms for long periods, thus exposing them in a not-so-savoury direction.
“A child, in their brain development, doesn’t have the ability to know that they’re being sucked into these addictive technologies, and to see the harm and step away from it,” Renner argued. “And because of that, we have to step in for them.”
Those who support the law point to recent studies that link higher risk of depression and mental-health issues to social media addiction. The study also found social media can make children particularly vulnerable to online bullying and predators.
Gov DeSantis said at an event Monday celebrating the new law, “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.”
This law followed a national uproar as some Republican-led states pushed to come down on minors’ usage of social media platforms.
The law, titled H.B.3 did not name any platforms in particular, but it does define a platform as one where more than 10% of active users who are younger than 16 years of age spend on average 2 hours per day, as well as those that have ‘addictive features‘ such as infinite scrolling and push alerts.
These restrictions are not new in the U.S. Similar bills have been passed in Arkansas and Utah, all in a bid to reduce or stop excessive social media usage by minors and to promote effective media literacy, but none went as far as Florida.
H.B. 3 will come into effect by January 2025. Some backlash is to be expected from social media organisations but as at press time no official comment has come from any of them. Those opposed to the law claim their constitutional rights are being violated and that the bill has no legal standing.
Penalties attached to the law include a fine of $50,000 for companies that intentionally violate it, and minors can sue the platforms for up to $10,000.
As internet penetration deepens in Nigeria and Africa, and social media become more and more pervasive, perhaps is it time sociologists begin to study the impact this technology may be having on our children, culture and society, and for policy makers to begin to take inspiration from Florida to address them.
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