Teen Online Curbs Give Family Values Groups Some Unlikely Wins

The wave of state laws that have rankled Big Tech by giving parents more authority over their children’s social media use started with a white paper.

The Institute for Family Studies wasn’t known for swaying tech policy. The pro-marriage think tank had long circulated reports on fertility, child rearing, and the dangers of cohabitation. But when worried mothers at an event asked the institute for help with kids’ social media and smartphone use, another priority arose: technology’s potential to disrupt family life.

Rather than echo calls for federal regulation of Big Tech’s business practices, “Protecting Teens From Big Tech: Five Policy Ideas for States” proposed framing the issue as one of parental rights and building a crackdown around contract law. Two years later, iterations of its social media recommendations have been adopted in at least nine states and turbocharged the national debate over protecting youth online.

“We were delighted and surprised, but we had no idea—no idea whatsoever—that this was going to gain traction,” said Michael Toscano, executive director of the institute, based in Charlottesville, Va., in a telephone interview.

The report, co-published with a Judeo-Christian think tank in August 2022, was fitting. President Joe Biden, in his State of the Union Address that year, said social media companies needed to be held accountable “for the national experiment they’re conducting on our children for profit.” The topic was one of the few ideas Democrats and Republicans could agree on. Its timing was also ideal to get the attention of Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R), who had just established an office dedicated to strengthening families.

Social media parental consent laws got their start at the Utah Capitol.

Photographer: Brenna Goth/Bloomberg Government

Federal judges have paused age-based restrictions in six states from going into effect. NetChoice, a trade association including Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google as members, fought Utah’s first-of-their-kind laws and successfully attacked others that followed.

Non-traditional families, such as divorced couples or people fostering children, face extra difficulties with requirements focused on parents, said Paul Taske, associate director of the NetChoice Litigation Center. NetChoice also argues the state laws block teens’ access to free speech and invade privacy by forcing users to turn over personal information.

“That actually puts the government in the driver’s seat, as opposed to the parents taking control for themselves,” Taske said by telephone.

Parental Power

Brad Wilcox directs the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and is the Future of Freedom Fellow at the Institute for Family Studies. He’s argued that the shift to online interactions contributes to the “closing of the American heart,” leading to drops in dating and marriage.

He shares his views as a contributor to the Deseret News, the Salt Lake City newspaper owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He’s also gained an audience on X that includes Cox.

In 2022, Cox was increasingly concerned about the impact of social media on youth mental health. Then came the white paper, which Wilcox wrote with Clare Morell, a fellow at the Washington-based Ethics and Public Policy Center; Adam Candeub, a senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America; and Jean Twenge, a San Diego State University psychology professor who researches social media impacts.

The think tanks aren’t required to publicly list their donors, though the Heritage Foundation in May announced $50,000 awards to both the Institute for Family Studies and the Ethics and Public Policy Center. The Center for Renewing America is headed by former President Donald Trump’s budget director, Russell Vought.

The authors recommended that states treat social media accounts as contracts entered into by minors “where they’re consenting to all sorts of things,” Morell said in a telephone interview. The report called for mandatory age verification on social media, giving parents full access to a child’s account, and allowing them to sue tech companies over violations. States could require sites to collect parental permission to create teen accounts and shut them down overnight, it said.

Within weeks, Cox publicly called for laws giving parents more control over social media and invited Wilcox to speak at a youth social media summit in January 2023.

“What you find is that most ordinary parents are just desperate for help, and they’re frustrated that neither the federal government nor the states, up until recently, were doing much to help them navigate this new challenge,” Wilcox said by telephone.

Two bills emerged from a group that included lawmakers and Aimee Winder Newton, director of Cox’s Office of Families. Wilcox and the Institute for Family Studies “offered valuable input,” and legislation drew from social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and other researchers, Cox said in response to written questions from Bloomberg Government. Cox declined to be interviewed.

Aimee Winder Newton, pictured at the state Capitol, directs Utah’s Office of Families.

Photographer: Brenna Goth/Bloomberg Government

Tech groups and privacy advocates warned the laws were unconstitutional. Opponents argued youth would still face online harms and feared users would have to give personal information to tech companies.

The measures passed with just a handful of holdouts. Cox signed them in March 2023 with Wilcox in attendance.

One law took the white paper’s ideas to require age verification, parental permission, account supervision, and shutting down platforms overnight. The second allowed private lawsuits for alleged harms to youths and regulated addictive design features.

“It was not a partisan issue,” Winder Newton said during an interview at the Utah state Capitol. “Both Democrats and Republicans supported the bills, and that was really important to us.”

Court Roadblocks

After similar laws were quickly adopted in four more states, parental consent requirements took their first blow in court in August 2023. An Arkansas judge agreed with NetChoice that the state’s age verification and parental consent law was too broad, too vague, and likely to infringe on the free speech rights of children and adults.

NetChoice has now filed seven lawsuits against youth social media laws, and similar successes elsewhere means parental consent isn’t a workable solution, Taske said. “Parents can still take actions themselves to limit their children’s access to speech, and that doesn’t create any sort of problem,” Taske said.

Litigation against Utah’s 2023 laws didn’t come just from Big Tech. Jessica Christensen, who co-founded the group Hope After Polygamy after fleeing a polygamous group at age 15, argued with other plaintiffs that the restrictions would isolate teens in abusive households from information and community on social media. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, a civil liberties advocacy group in Philadelphia, backed the lawsuit.

“Not all kids are raised by safe parents,” Christensen said in an interview near Salt Lake City. A judge dismissed a later version of their claims, though FIRE has since amended its complaint to address lack of standing.

Amid the legal challenges, several think tank authors later offered states model legislation clarifying that regulations are based on a parent’s role in online contracts, rather than restricting speech, Morell said.

“We do believe that these laws are constitutional and they can be legally defensible in court,” she said.

Utah Redo

Utah lawmakers this year replaced the 2023 laws, before they went into effect, to help them withstand litigation, said state Rep. Jordan Teuscher (R), who sponsored bills both years. The new laws include a content-neutral definition of social media, give minors more power over parental involvement, and boost the focus on privacy, he said during an interview at the Utah state Capitol.

Utah state Rep. Jordan Teuscher (R), pictured outside his office at the state Capitol, has pushed youth social media legislation.

Photographer: Brenna Goth/Bloomberg Government

A federal court said one of the new laws is likely to violate the First Amendment by requiring default privacy settings for minors and prohibiting features such as endless scroll. The law, though, withstood claims it violates Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that shields sites from liability over user-posted content.

Utah’s second law, which took effect Oct. 1, allows private lawsuits over harms to minors caused by social media sites that use algorithms. Sites can guard against liability by imposing time limits, restricting overnight use, disabling addictive features, and securing parental permission.

State leaders say the pressure is working, noting changes by tech companies that include Meta’s new restrictions for teens on Instagram that require a parent’s permission for those under 16 to change the safety features. Meta says the move wasn’t a response to a specific law.

“I certainly think that they are more motivated than they were two years ago to try to protect kids online,” Teuscher said.