Florida Legislature Passes Bill Banning Social Media for Kids Under 16, Raising Free Speech Concerns

AP Photo/Phil Sears

The Florida Legislature passed a bill Thursday that would prohibit children under 16 from using social media — a ban free speech advocates say violates the First Amendment.

The bill in question, HB-1, passed the Florida Senate Thursday morning 23-14, on a mostly party-line vote, with 21 Republicans and 2 Democrats voting Yea, and 10 Democrats and 4 Republicans voting Nay, and 3 state senators not voting.

Shortly after 5 pm ET, the bill went back to the Florida House, where it had already passed in a previous form. The House voted to approve it once again, 108-7, with the 7 Nay votes all Democrats.

The text of the bill creates a new section in the Florida Statutes that requires social media platforms to prohibit minors who are younger than 16 years old from creating accounts, to “use reasonable age verification methods to verify the age of each account holder,” and to provide a disclaimer warning about social media being “harmful to mental health” and using “design features that have addictive qualities.” Violations of the law, if passed, would be deemed “an unfair and deceptive trade practice” and the state government can collect a civil penalty of up to $50,000 per violation. If a minor account holder asks for their account to be deleted, or a parent or legal guardian asks for a minor’s account to be deleted, and the platform does not comply with the request within the statutory deadline (5 or 10 days, respectively), it would be liable for $10,000 per violation, plus court costs and attorney fees.

The bill has attracted criticism from the right and left, one of several bills this session that have raised objections from free speech advocates and predictions that they cannot pass constitutional muster.

State Sen. Jason Pizzo (D) told Tampa area NBC affiliate WFLA he sympathized with parents’ concerns about the harmful effects of social media, himself the father of two teenage boys, but ultimately this is something that families, not government, needs to handle.

“This isn’t 1850,” said Pizzo, who represents parts of Broward and Miami-Dade Counties. “While parents show up to school board meetings to ban books, their kids are on their iPads looking at really bad stuff…Put your phone down. Have a conversation with your kids.”

Jacksonville State Rep. Angie Nixon (D) had a similar take as Pizzo, telling Mediaite that her “mind is blown that we think children are mature enough to work on construction sites” — referring to another bill this session that rolled back restrictions on child labor — but they aren’t mature enough for social media.”

“We can’t continue to cherry pick when we will and won’t allow children to have agency and make decisions about their lives,” said Nixon. “Today the Republican led legislature took away my choice as a mother to moderate and decide what I will allow my children to do. That’s not freedom.”

State Rep. Anna Eskamani (D), an Orlando-area lawmaker, voted against the bill both times it came up in the House. Thursday evening, she posted a statement on The Platform Formerly Known as Twitter saying that she “cannot in good conscience vote for legislation that is likely unconstitutional.”

“Though I agree more needs to be done in protecting our youth on social media, this bill continues to go too far in taking away parents’ rights and banning social media usage — and thus First Amendment rights — for young Floridians,” Eskamani continued. “It wasn’t that long ago that this legislature passed a bill to prohibit tech companies from de-platforming individuals, and here we are de-platforming young people. The irony has no bounds.”

State Sen. Blaise Ingoglia (R), who previously served as chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, was one of four GOP state senators who voted against HB-1. Reached by phone Thursday evening, Ingoglia told Mediaite that he thought that the bill had “constitutional problems” in conflict with the First Amendment and it was likely it “will get struck down by the courts.”

“If we are going to talk about parents’ rights,” Ingoglia added, referring to various education laws that have passed in Florida in recent years, then “taking away parental rights seems to be the antithesis of that.”

Shoshana Weissman, a fellow at the free market think tank R Street Institute, has been recently focusing on multiple states’ efforts to impose social media restrictions on minors.

“Banning users under 16 from accessing free speech violates the First Amendment many times over,” Weissman told Mediaite. Regarding HB-1, she said that the various provisions that “narrow applicability of the bill to certain social media platforms and all the speech based exemptions similarly create First Amendment concerns.”

The specific mechanism of HB-1 of requiring users to upload personal IDs, documents, and other information “would cause manifest cybersecurity vulnerabilities, it would violate the First Amendment many times over according to established precedent, and it would just waste taxpayer money,” she argued. “Preventing minors from accessing social media and requiring age verification means that all users in Florida will have to upload government IDs, face scans, social security numbers or other invasive means to endless platforms including TikTok, which many believe is a cybersecurity risk. Age verification is identity verification particularly when a parent needs to approve a child’s use. The parent has to prove they are not only an adult, but the parent to the specific child.”

She commented that similar laws that were attempted in Utah and Arkansas had been tossed by the courts, even though Utah was coming back with a bill that had “most of the same problems.”

The bill is now headed to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R-FL) desk, but as Weissman noted, he has expressed doubts about the bill and acknowledged other states’ efforts being struck down in court.

“I’m sympathetic to, as a parent, what’s going on with our youth,” DeSantis said at a press conference last month, according to WFLA. “But I also understand that to just say that someone that’s 15 just cannot have it no matter what, even if the parent consents, that may create some legal issues.”