PRESS RELEASE: EPIC Publishes Model Bill to Protect Minors from Online Harms and Promote Safer Platform Design

Washington, D.C. — Today, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) published a Model Age-Appropriate Design Code bill that establishes strong privacy and online safety protections for minors.  

The model bill centers privacy and safety as a function of platform design, building off Vermont’s Age-Appropriate Design Code and integrating lessons from new research and recent litigation.  

The bill: 

• Gives children agency over their online experiences;  
• Prohibits specific high-risk design practices;  
• Requires large companies to evaluate design features for risk of compulsive use; and  
• Provides critical transparency for researchers, policymakers, and users into companies’ design practices. 

In drafting the model bill, EPIC relied on its deep privacy knowledge, significant state policy experience, and expertise in speech-protective platform regulation. The model bill has been carefully designed to avoid constitutional issues that have been raised over similar child online safety laws. 

“Tech companies design their products to extract kids’ data and attention for profit, and attempts to ban kids from social media or require parental consent won’t change that,” said Megan Iorio, EPIC Senior Counsel and Director of the Platform Governance & Accountability Program. “EPIC’s model design code bill instead requires tech companies to design their products to respect kids’ privacy and autonomy so that kids can have better, safer experiences online.” 

As momentum continues to surge in state legislatures to protect children from online harm, EPIC’s model bill takes the right approach. The blueprint avoids pitfalls found in other models, such as requiring parental consent for a minor to access social media or forcing all users to undergo age verification to access an online platform. 

“EPIC deeply understands the speech and privacy issues involved in platform design legislation and carefully drafted their model bill to protect kids from the worst social media harms,” said Vermont Representative Monique Priestley, sponsor of the Vermont Age-Appropriate Design Code. “A law like this can only be effective if it is also constitutional, and EPIC’s expertise in the First Amendment and the ongoing litigation on this issue made EPIC a valuable, trusted resource for me in drafting Vermont’s AADC.” 

Read the bill in full and find supporting materials here.  

EPIC is happy to speak with any policymaker working on these issues or to provide a Word document of the model bill text. Please contact Megan Iorio at [email protected] with any questions. 

### 

ABOUT EPIC 

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) was established in 1994 to protect privacy, freedom of expression, and democratic values in the information age. Our mission is to secure the fundamental right to privacy in the digital age for all people through advocacy, research, and litigation.