State and federal governments have hit the ground running in the new year with a multitude of new social media bills that could reshape the technology landscape for decades. The efforts this year build on efforts from last year when several states passed social media legislation despite challenges by courts and warnings from experts. States across the country are now repeating the same mistakes—and making the problem worse—with many unresolved constitutional concerns to boot.
Patterns are already emerging in 2025. Bills can be divided between proposals requiring parental permission to use platforms and others that layer an additional ban on minors under a certain age on top of parental permission requirements. Connecticut and Illinois, for example, propose parental permission for social media use whereas Alabama and Oklahoma go further by still requiring parental consent for those over sixteen but blanket banning kids under that age from accessing social media at all.
And it is not just proposals either. Earlier this year, Florida was set to start enforcing its social media ban on children under the age of fourteen, with additional regulations for children above that age, but the law quickly got tied up in legal disputes.
Despite different levels of severity, all of these bills impose age verification requirements of some kind. Implementing these policies is much easier said than done. Laws mandating age verification have consistently been challenged in court—at taxpayer expense.
As long as online age verification has been an issue, courts have mostly rejected it as unconstitutional as these laws are often ruled to be content-based restrictions. These are laws targeting the substance of speech and are subject to the highest level of scrutiny in court. To justify the law, governments must show not only that the law exists for a very good reason but also that it is the least restrictive way of accomplishing that goal.
The back and forth between legislators and courts over age verification dates back to the Communications Decency Act of 1996. This law banned the distribution of obscene content to minors and allowed websites to test for age by requiring a credit card, debit card, or other means of age verification. Most of the law was ruled unconstitutional in Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union as its methods would impede free speech by adults without the means to verify their age, like adding a credit card. Current attempts to require age verification would have to not burden adults in the process to meet this standard. Requiring in-person parental permission to access otherwise protected speech also failed in 2011 when California passed a law on the sale of violent video games to minors.
Much like with the Communications Decency Act and the law against the sale of violent video games, first Amendment concerns are still a major roadblock in modern bills today. Utah’s age verification law, for example, was blocked by a federal judge in 2024 for First Amendment concerns, with the court ruling that the law likely impeded social media platforms’ constitutionally protected right to display user-generated speech in the way they choose. California’s law prohibiting platforms from offering algorithmic feeds and notifications during certain hours was also blocked due to free speech issues while the courts settle the issue. As it stands now, courts are waiting for details to emerge before issuing a final ruling.
Even those who believe children should be banned from social media note the challenges of writing a bill that will pass constitutional muster and also be feasible to implement. Technology policy analyst, Mike Wacker, for example, recently argued that a simple ban on anyone under sixteen accessing social media would be easier to defend in court than parental consent laws. He rightly notes that much of that complexity around parental permission stems from the fact that platforms must verify not only the age of the user but also the parent’s age and their relationship, especially in complex custody situations. But then again none of that really fits the broader trend of empowering parents.
State social media bills are festering in the new year. Despite the issues with the constitutionality of age verification, states are doubling down on bills more likely to end in courtrooms than stay enshrined in state statutory codes.
Trey Price is a policy analyst with the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit education and research organization. For more information about the Institute, follow us on X @ConsumerPal.