Massachusetts Senate takes aim at addictive social media feeds, sidestepping House proposal to mandate age verification for all social media users

Earlier this month, the Massachusetts State Senate passed a bill (S. 3175) designed to limit youth exposure to addictive social media feeds. 

 I previously discussed a bill approved by the Massachusetts State House that would ban all users under the age of fourteen from social media platforms and mandate all users—including adults—to verify with the platform that they are over the age of fourteen.  

The Senate and House proposals are substantially different: the Senate proposal primarily regulates platforms by restricting the use of addictive features through an optional age verification scheme, and the House proposal regulates users by mandating age verification as a condition to use any platform.   

Summary 

S.3175 identifies a host of social media features that drive addictive or otherwise negative behavior—algorithmically driven feeds, overnight push notifications, autoplay, infinite scroll, and precise location sharing—and requires platforms to disable those features for minors and users who choose not to verify their age. Only adults would be permitted to enable these features upon successful age verification, which the proposal requires to include “at least 1 method . . . that allows a user to maintain anonymity” on the platform. Under the proposal, platforms are required to both “use commercially reasonable and technically feasible methods” to verify a user’s age and provide a “clear, simple, and prominent opportunity” to opt-out of age verification if a user so chooses. The proposal also prohibits platforms from degrading their service for any user who does not enable the addictive features through age verification.  

If the proposal becomes law, platforms will request age verification upon sign-up. At that point, the user is presented with two options: verify their age or opt-out. If an adult user verifies their age, they can proceed with enabling addictive features. If any user opts out, they can proceed with addictive features disabled. And if a user verifies that they are a minor, they will be unable to use addictive features until they become an adult.  

Reacting to Constitutional Concerns 

In a fact sheet accompanying the Senate proposal, the bill’s sponsors highlight that their proposal “respects the First Amendment” by making its proposed age verification scheme optional for all users and providing a pathway for users who choose to verify their age to remain anonymous.  

It is in respect to the age verification scheme that the Senate proposal differs most from the House proposal.  

Under the House proposal, any user unwilling to submit to their age verification scheme—which provided no guarantee of anonymity—would be unable to use the platform at all. The House proposal also categorically banned all users under fourteen years old and permitted fifteen- and sixteen-year-old users only with parental consent (thus requiring non-user parents to verify their identity in addition to their child’s).  

The Senate bill’s author, Senator Cynthia Creem, described her proposal as “what we thought would be the best way to do it if we could start from scratch.” 

The Senate’s desire to start from scratch follows significant backlash from civil liberties groups to the House proposal and a similar law that narrowly survived judicial review in Florida. These groups noted, among other concerns, that mandatory age verification schemes eviscerate anonymity on social media platforms, chilling speech. Such concerns may be front of mind to state legislators as the federal government continues to pressure social media platforms to hand over records of users who oppose federal policies.  

Critics of the House legislation view the Senate proposal as a significant improvement, noting the bill’s optional age verification scheme is far less likely to suppress speech and eviscerate anonymity than a mandatory age verification scheme. However, those critics note that the Senate proposal still raises concerns by making age verification the default on social media platforms, requiring users to opt-out to ensure that they are not exposing sensitive personal data. This, the critics say, risks many users unnecessarily submitting to the age verification scheme to complete the sign-up process, even if it is not mandatory.  

Looking Ahead 

In passing this bill and refusing to act on the bill passed by the House, the Senate has put itself on a collision course with the House and the Governor. Though the Governor recently proposed some of the restrictions to addictive features included in the Senate proposal, she also expressed support for the House’s mandatory age verification scheme. This sets up a clash with the Senate pushing an optional age verification scheme and the House and the Governor pushing a mandatory age verification scheme. And time is running out to act, as the deadline for bills to move forward in this legislative session is July 31.  

Further complicating matters is the fact that the House social media proposal is tacked on to another proposal with broad support—a bell-to-bell cell phone ban in schools.  

Senator Creem stated that she has hope that the Legislature and the Governor will be able to “work it out procedurally,” but that process will require the Senate, House, and Governor to reconcile their differences while a related proposal—the bell-to-bell cell phone ban—hangs in the balance. The outcome of this legislative clash will carry significant consequences for the free speech rights of minors across the Commonwealth, both inside and outside the school building.  

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* Our blogs are written by the firm’s attorneys, without the use of AI or ghostwriters