EPIC Supports California Kids Online Safety Bill if Lawmakers Remove Social Media Ban

On Thursday, EPIC submitted a letter to the California Senate Privacy Committee urging amendments to AB 1709, a bill that—in its current form—would ban minors from having accounts on social media platforms that provide an addictive feed to any user. 

EPIC strongly supports strong social media regulations to keep kids safe online and protect consumers from manipulative and addictive design practices. But flatly banning minors from platforms is not the right way to go about this. 

As our letter to the Privacy Committee explains, though account bans can be initially appealing for their simplicity, they have significant practical and legal drawbacks compared to laws that directly regulate addictive design practices. Not only do bans burden kids’ First Amendment rights—making them likely to get struck down in court—they are also less effective at protecting minors since they do not push companies to actually change their harmful practices. Early results from Australia indicate that kids routinely circumvent bans, leaving them to access platforms with no protections at all. 

It is vital that governments protect kids from addictive social media, but lawmakers should prohibit platforms from providing addictive features, rather than ban kids from platforms. This approach is both constitutionally sound and more likely to be effective. 

To this end, EPIC suggests that legislators amend AB 1709 to instead strengthen its existing design laws, requiring platforms to turn off addictive feeds and other addictive features by default, and only turn them on when an adult explicitly requests them. 

EPIC is grateful for California’s long-standing leadership in protecting children online and hopes lawmakers will adopt our recommendations to make AB 1709 effective and meaningful, rather than a litigation risk that could set back social media regulations in California for years to come.