Illinois passes Children’s Social Media Safety Act

The Illinois state legislature voted Monday to pass HB 5511, the Children’s Social Media Safety Act, which regulates harmful platform design like addictive feeds and overnight push notifications. 

Governor JB Pritzker is expected to sign the bill into law. “While big tech abandons its responsibility to keep our kids safe online, Illinois has stepped in to force them to,” he said in a statement. 

The CSMSA requires strong default privacy settings for minors, and also requires digital, device-level age assurance to ensure that minors benefit from its protections. Devices must provide an interface at account setup for the primary user of the device to self-report their birth date or age. Then, after receiving consent from the user, the device can share that age-range signal with online platforms or companies to provide age-appropriate safeguards and privacy protections for minors.   

Many of the provisions in the CSMSA are similar to the model bill that EPIC released earlier this year. The EPIC  Model Age-Appropriate Design Code protects kids online by prohibiting addictive design features for minors, giving them control over their privacy and preventing companies from designing products to promote compulsive use. In drafting the model bill, EPIC relied on its deep privacy knowledge, significant state policy experience, and expertise in  speech-protective platform regulation.