Legislating child internet safety

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Wednesday announced lawmakers had filed two social media-regulating bills she discussed in her State of the State address back in January. They were filed two days after a federal judge ruled her previous law unconstitutional.

The two bills would amend the Social Media Safety Act of 2023, which required minors under 18 to obtain parental consent before they create new social media accounts.

The law had been under a court injunction until Monday, when U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks declared it unconstitutional. He said it violated First Amendment freedom of speech rights and violated the plaintiff’s due process rights. The plaintiff is NetChoice, an association that includes, among others, Amazon, Google, Netflix, X, YouTube and Meta, the company that owns Facebook.

Both Senate Bill 611 and Senate Bill 612 are sponsored by Sen. Tyler Dees, R-Siloam Springs, and Rep. Jon Eubanks, R-Paris.

Senate Bill 611 would prohibit social media platforms from engaging in practices that would evoke addictions or compulsive behaviors in minors, defined in the bill as those under age 16. Those practices include notifications, recommended content, an “artificial sense of accomplishment,” or engaging users with online “bots.”

Social media companies would have to implement technology to prevent minors from circumventing the law. They also would have to develop an online dashboard that parents

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could use to view, understand and limit their child’s online habits on the platform.

Parents could sue a social media company if they violate the law. Companies also could be subject to civil penalties of $10,000 per violation. Each day would constitute a separate violation. The money would go into a Crimes Against Children Fund paying for lawsuits by the attorney general against social media companies.

Senate Bill 612 would punish social media platforms that lead users to purchase a controlled substance, develop an eating disorder, commit or try to commit suicide, or develop or sustain an addiction to the platform. Companies that violate that section would be subject to fines of up to $10,000 per violation. Parents could sue social media platforms if their minor children under age 16 committed or tried to commit suicide after being exposed to online content promoting suicide or selfharm, if the attempt results in significant bodily or cognitive harm.

In most cases, bills introduced at this stage of the session would have little chance of passage. Lawmakers have voted to recess April 16, so there’s not much time.

But youth internet safety is one of Sanders’ core issues – one in which she has special credibility as a mom of three young children. Republican legislators won’t deny her this priority, and some Democrats may agree with the bills’ purposes.

This session, she’s already passed the Bell to Bell, No Cell Act. It banned personal electronic devices throughout the school day at public school. Dees and Eubanks also were the primary sponsors of that bill. She had sent a copy of the book “The Anxious Generation” by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt to all of her fellow governors and all Arkansas state legislators. That book is about the dangers of youth cell phone and internet use. She and Haidt toured schools in Arkansas in December and later appeared together at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland.

In addition to the governor’s strong support, Arkansas has a socially conservative Legislature. Many members would support protecting young people from the big social media companies like Facebook and X.

Social media companies will sue, of course. Complying with the law would be difficult and costly. They don’t want to navigate a patchwork of state laws in addition to the patchwork of international laws they already are navigating.

In other words, expect a short legislative process followed by a long legal one. Bet on the governor winning the first, and the billion-dollar social media companies winning the second.

Steve Brawner’s column is syndicated to 18 outlets in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@ mac. com.