Lawmakers in New York said Tuesday they are finalizing legislation that would allow parents to block their children from receiving social media messages curated by a platform’s algorithm, a move to curb feeds that critics claim to keep young users glued to their screens.
Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James have been advocating for the regulations since October, facing strong opposition from the tech industry. The amended version removes provisions that would have limited the hours a child could spend on a site. With the legislative session ending this week, Albany lawmakers are making a last-ditch effort to get the bill passed.
“The algorithmic feeds are designed to be dopamine for children,” the Assembly sponsors Nily Rozic, a Democrat said Tuesday. “We’re trying to regulate that design feature.”
The legislation in New York follows moves by other US states to curb social media use among children. Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation banning social media accounts for children under 14 and requiring parental consent for 14- and 15-year-olds. Utah revised its policy in March requiring social media companies to verify the age of their users, but removed the requirement that parents agree to their child creating an account. An Arkansas state law that would also have required parental consent was put on hold by a federal judge last year.
Advocates say New York’s Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) For Kids Act, which would ban algorithm-fueled content without “verifiable parental consent,” is aimed at protecting young people’s mental health and development by helping them against features designed to stop them. endless scrolling.
Instead of automated algorithms suggesting content classified as addictive based on what a user has clicked on in the past, young account holders would see a chronological feed of content from users they already follow.
Rozic said the New York bill does not seek to regulate the content available on social media, but only “the vehicle that supercharges the feed and makes it addictive.”
Critics of the bill, including the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, warn it could make matters worse for children, including leading internet companies to collect more information about users.
“Lawmakers are creating a fairy tale,” the privacy group’s executive director, Albert Fox Cahn, said in a statement. “There is simply no technology that can prove the age of New Yorkers without undermining their privacy.”
The trade group NetChoice, of which Meta and X are members, accused New York of “trying to replace parents with government.”
“Furthermore, this bill is unconstitutional because it violates the First Amendment by requiring websites to censor New Yorkers’ ability to read articles or make statements online, by blocking basic access to websites without an ID and age, and by refusing editorial access. rights of web pages to display, organize and promote content as they choose,” Carl Szabo, vice president and general counsel of NetChoice, said in an emailed statement.
The legislation also bans sites from sending notifications to minors between midnight and 6 a.m. without parental consent.
Businesses can be fined $5,000 per violation.
If passed by the Assembly and Senate, Hochul is expected to sign the bill and a new data collection scheme into law, after calling the legislation one of her top priorities.
“We have stopped selling tobacco to children. We have raised the drinking age. And today we fight to protect children from the defining problem of our time,” Hochul wrote in an op-ed in the New York Post last week.
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Thompson reported from Buffalo, New York. Associated Press writer Anthony Izaguirre contributed from Albany, New York.
