Oklahoma lawmakers are teaching policymakers in other states how not to handle social media policy. The Oklahoma Senate Technology and Telecommunications Committee recently passed multiple new social media bills out of committee. Senate Bill 932 is the most troubling among them. It’s a grab bag of some of the worst social media policies that have been proposed across the country.
To enforce the law, SB 932 creates a private right of action for children, parents, and legal guardians to sue social media companies for a mental health disorder diagnosis caused by algorithmically curated social media feeds. The bill presumes the platform is at fault unless they follow highly selective guidelines: limiting the use of algorithmically recommended content to three hours per day for minors across all devices, restricting platform access between 10:30 PM and 6:30 AM, requiring parental permission to access algorithmic feeds, and turning off “engagement driven design elements” (i.e. algorithms). These requirements have been individually challenged in court in other states, including Utah and California. Oklahoma wants to try all of them at once.
Private rights of action unfortunately encourage costly and frivolous lawsuits—many of which do not significantly benefit aggrieved consumers. In some class action cases, consumers receive literal coupons or vouchers of questionable value. Attorneys notoriously cash in by taking a significant share of the winnings while consumers are left to split up the leftovers. Under the Illinois Biometric Privacy Act (BIPA) specifically, courts have ruled that consumers can be aggrieved under BIPA even if they suffer no harm, which has led to an uptick in BIPA cases, and has even led Illinois policymakers to consider options to narrow the scope of the law.
There is no reason to think lawsuits under SB 932 would go any better. In fact, it could easily be worse (or at least more confusing) because lawsuits would effectively hinge on speculative harms given lacking evidence linking social media with mental health problems.
The bill fortunately stops short of using the medical term “addiction,” like in California and Virginia, but the effect of the bill still hinges on an unsubstantiated link between social media and negative mental health outcomes. One comprehensive study of the relationship between social media and mental illness among young people shows mixed and weak results.
Besides legal challenges, these proposals also raise worrying privacy concerns. To take advantage of the rebuttal presumption, platforms will need to track when—and for how long—users are active on their websites. All of this will require more data collection, which will only be as safe as the privacy practices of the company collecting it. As companies collect more personal information, it will create an even more enticing target for data thieves attempting to illegally access this treasure trove of sensitive data. Whether age verification is done by the platform or device, it inherently involves collecting personal and identifiable information that is vulnerable to data breaches. The parental permission incentives mean platforms will need to determine not only the user’s age but also verify the parent—which means more data collection for everyone.
These are not just theoretical concerns. Data breaches and theft of child identity are already major problems. That information has even been used to open credit card accounts or apply for loans.
In a year chock-full of questionable social media bills, Oklahoma’s SB932 manages to combine the worst approaches into a single bill. It threatens to unleash a wave of lawsuits while also undermining privacy. This mistake has already been passed by the committee, so it is up to the Senate to stop this nightmare before it gains the force of law.
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.