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Utah social media law means kids need approval from parents

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SALT LAKE CITY –

Children and teens in Utah would lose access to social media apps such as TikTok if they don’t have parental consent and face other restrictions under a first-in-the-nation law designed to shield young people from the addictive platforms.

Two laws signed by Republican Gov. Spencer Cox Thursday prohibit kids under 18 from using social media between the hours of 10:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m., require age verification for anyone who wants to use social media in the state and open the door to lawsuits on behalf of children claiming social media harmed them. Collectively, they seek to prevent children from being lured to apps by addictive features and from having ads promoted to them.

The companies are expected to sue before the laws take effect in March 2024.

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The crusade against social media in Utah’s Republican-supermajority Legislature is the latest reflection of how politicians’ perceptions of technology companies has changed, including among typically pro-business Republicans.

Tech giants like Facebook and Google have enjoyed unbridled growth for over a decade, but amid concerns over user privacy, hate speech, misinformation and harmful effects on teens’ mental health, lawmakers have made Big Tech attacks a rallying cry on the campaign trail and begun trying to rein them in once in office. Utah’s law was signed on the same day TikTok’s CEO testified before Congress about, among other things, the platform’s effects on teenagers’ mental health.

But legislation has stalled on the federal level, pushing states to step in.

Outside of Utah, lawmakers in red states including Arkansas, Texas, Ohio and Louisiana and blue states including New Jersey are advancing similar proposals. California, meanwhile, enacted a law last year requiring tech companies to put kids’ safety first by barring them from profiling children or using personal information in ways that could harm children physically or mentally.

The new Utah laws also require that parents be given access to their child’s accounts. They outline rules for people who want to sue over harms they claim the apps cause. If implemented, lawsuits against social media companies involving kids under 16 will shift the burden of proof and require social media companies show their products weren’t harmful — not the other way around.

Social media companies could have to design new features to comply with parts of the laws that prohibit promoting ads to minors and showing them in search results. Tech companies like TikTok, Snapchat and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, make most of their money by targeting advertising to their users.

The wave of legislation and its focus on age verification has garnered pushback from technology companies as well as digital privacy groups known for blasting their data collection practices.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation earlier this month demanded Cox veto the Utah legislation, saying time limits and age verification would infringe on teens’ rights to free speech and privacy. Moreover, verifying every users’ age would empower social media platforms with more data, like the government-issued identification required, they said.

If the law is implemented, the digital privacy advocacy group said in a statement, “the majority of young Utahns will find themselves effectively locked out of much of the web.”

Tech industry lobbyists decried the laws as unconstitutional, saying they infringe on people’s right to exercise the First Amendment online.

“Utah will soon require online services to collect sensitive information about teens and families, not only to verify ages, but to verify parental relationships, like government-issued IDs and birth certificates, putting their private data at risk of breach,” said Nicole Saad Bembridge, an associate director at NetChoice, a tech lobby group.

What’s not clear in Utah’s new law and those under consideration elsewhere is how states plan to enforce the new regulations. Companies are already prohibited from collecting data on children under 13 without parental consent under the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. To comply, social media companies already ban kids under 13 from signing up to their platforms — but children have been shown to easily get around the bans, both with and without their parents’ consent.

Cox said studies have shown that time spent on social media leads to “poor mental health outcomes” for children.

“We remain very optimistic that we will be able to pass not just here in the state of Utah but across the country legislation that significantly changes the relationship of our children with these very destructive social media apps,” he said.

The set of laws won support from parents groups and child advocates, who generally welcomed them, with some caveats. Common Sense Media, a nonprofit focused on kids and technology, hailed the effort to rein in social media’s addictive features and set rules for litigation, with its CEO saying it “adds momentum for other states to hold social media companies accountable to ensure kids across the country are protected online.”

However, Jim Steyer, the CEO and founder of Common Sense, said giving parents access to children’s social media posts would “deprive kids of the online privacy protections we advocate for.” Age verification and parental consent may hamper kids who want to create accounts on certain platforms, but does little to stop companies from harvesting their data once they’re on, Steyer said.

The laws are the latest effort from Utah lawmakers focused on the fragility of children in the digital age. Two years ago, Cox signed legislation that called on tech companies to automatically block porn on cellphones and tablets sold in the state, after arguments about the dangers it posed to children found resonance among Utah lawmakers, the majority of whom are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Amid concerns about enforcement, lawmakers ultimately revised that legislation to prevent it from taking effect unless five other states passed similar laws.

The regulations come as parents and lawmakers are growing increasingly concerned about kids and teenagers’ social media use and how platforms like TikTok, Instagram and others are affecting young people’s mental health. The dangers of social media to children is also emerging as a focus for trial lawyers, with addiction lawsuits being filed thorughout the country.

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Ortutay reported from Oakland, California.

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Five of the best books about social media – The Guardian

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From Covid conspiracy theories to recent speculations about Catherine, Princess of Wales, social media is at the heart of how we share information, and misinformation, with one another in the 21st century. For those who want to have a better understanding of social media and how it affects us, here are a selection of titles that explore how we consume, share, and manipulate information on social media platforms.


So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson

Journalist and author Jon Ronson argues we live in “a great renaissance of public shaming”, and this book tracks down some of the many victims of online shaming to understand what happened to them as a result. In the process, we learn about Ronson’s own values, question our own, and figure out how we’ve reached a time where an online feed can become a social courtroom.


Doppelganger by Naomi Klein

After getting repeatedly mistaken for feminist-turned-conspiracy-theorist Naomi Wolf online, and then in real life, Naomi Klein penned Doppelganger as an earnest and introspective look at herself. The book explores how conspiracy theories and lies spread quickly through the internet, and how the social and political climate of the physical world manipulates the way we experience online platforms. While not exclusively about social media, the story behind Doppelganger is a perfect case of the ways our digital lives and identities intersect with what we experience in reality – and how dangerous the repercussions of spreading online lies can be.

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Irresistible by Adam Alter

Have you ever wondered why you can’t stop scrolling on your TikTok “for you” page, or obsessing over how many likes you got on a recent Facebook post? You’re not alone, and Adam Alter’s book explores why we get sucked into the digital world. He answers what makes an online addiction, whether it be to emails, Instagram, or Netflix, different to other forms of addiction – and warns us of the dangers this could cause long-term. As well as introspection, he gives practical solutions to how digital addiction can be controlled for good.


Extremely Online by Taylor Lorenz

Journalist Taylor Lorenz calls this book “a social history of social media”; she uses real-life case studies of mothers, teenagers, politicians and influencers to assess how social media touches all demographics. Extremely Online explores topics from the digital economy and influencer culture, to what makes moments go viral on Twitter and how this is all influencing the way we socialise and understand the world. At its core, this book explores the idea of what it means to connect – and how social media as an innovation has warped communication.


TikTok Boom by Chris Stokel-Walker

TikTok is arguably one of the most significant advancements in social media in the past two decades. This book by journalist and writer Chris Stokel-Walker explores how the app is changing the way users interact with content. It moves away from the social-commentary style of the other books mentioned here, instead using business and technology analysis as a means to describe wider socio-political repercussions of the app. Stokel-Walker bridges the gap between the digital and the physical, showing the feedback loop that exists between what happens online on platforms such as TikTok and the real world.

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Ontario school boards take social media giants to court for disrupting student learning – CBC.ca

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Four major Ontario school boards are taking some of the largest social media companies to court over their products, alleging the way they’re designed have negatively rewired the way children think, behave and learn and have thus disrupted the way schools operate.

The public district school boards of Toronto, Peel and Ottawa, along with Toronto’s Catholic counterpart, are looking for about $4.5 billion in damages from Meta Platforms Inc., Snap Inc. and ByteDance Ltd., which operate the platforms Facebook and Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok respectively, according to statements of claim filed Wednesday.

“The influence of social media on today’s youth at school cannot be denied. It leads to pervasive problems such as distraction, social withdrawal, cyberbullying, a rapid escalation of aggression, and mental health challenges,” said Colleen Russell-Rawlins, director of education at the Toronto District School Board, in a release Thursday.

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“Therefore, it is imperative that we take steps to ensure the well-being of our youth. We are calling for measures to be implemented to mitigate these harms and prioritize the mental health and academic success of our future generation.” 

The school boards, operating under a new coalition called Schools for Social Media Change, allege students are experiencing an “attention, learning, and mental health crisis” because of “prolific and compulsive use of social media products.”

Trying to respond to this has caused “massive strains” on the group’s funds, including in additional mental health programming and staff, IT costs and administrative resources, the release states. The boards call on the social media giants to “remediate” the costs to the larger education system and redesign their products to keep students safe.

Neinstein LLP, a Toronto-based firm, is representing the school boards in their lawsuit. The boards will not be responsible for any costs related to the lawsuit unless a successful outcome is reached, the release states.

“A strong education system is the foundation of our society and our community. Social media products and the changes in behaviour, judgment and attention that they cause pose a threat to that system and to the student population our schools serve,” said Duncan Embury, a partner and head of litigation at Neinstein.

CBC Toronto has reached out to the companies named for comment.

The latest lawsuit comes after a large civil suit against Meta Platforms Inc. was initiated in the U.S. last fall. Over 30 states accused Meta Platforms Inc. of harming young people’s mental health and contributing to the youth mental health crisis by knowingly designing features on Instagram and Facebook that cause children to be addicted to its platforms.

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Four Ontario school boards sue social-media giants for products that harm students' behaviour and education – The Globe and Mail

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Colleen Russell Rawlins, Director of Education with the Toronto District School Board, talks to students at Selwyn Elementary School on Mar 27.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail

Four of Canada’s largest school boards are suing the companies behind social-media platforms Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat and TikTok, accusing them of negligently designing products that disrupt learning and rewire student behaviour while leaving educators to manage the fallout.

In four separate statements of claim filed on Wednesday in Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice, the Toronto District School Board, the Toronto Catholic District School Board, the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board and the Peel District School Board accused social-media companies of employing “exploitative business practices” and choosing to “maximize profits” at the expense of the mental health and well-being of students.

The addictive nature of social media means that educators spend more classroom time trying to have students focus on their lessons, the boards say in the statements of claim. They say the compulsive use of social-media platforms has also strained limited school board resources: Schools require additional mental health programs and personnel; staff spend more time addressing aggressive behaviour and incidents of cyberbullying; and information-technology services and cybersecurity costs have increased.

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“The Defendants have acted in a high-handed, reckless, malicious, and reprehensible manner without due regard for the well-being of the student population and the education system,” according to the statements of claim.

Similar lawsuits against social-media companies have been filed in the United States in recent months by individual states and school districts. This would mark the first time it’s being done by school boards in Canada.

The four boards filed their lawsuits against Meta Platforms Inc., which is responsible for Facebook and Instagram, Snap Inc., the parent company of SnapChat, and ByteDance Ltd., owner of TikTok.

The school boards are advancing combined claims of around $4.5-billion. They are also asking that the social-media giants redesign their products to keep students safe.

None of the allegations have been proven in court.

In an e-mailed statement, Tonya Johnson, a spokeswoman for Snap, said the platform was “intentionally designed to be different from traditional social-media” so that users could communicate with friends. “While we will always have more work to do, we feel good about the role Snapchat plays in helping close friends feel connected, happy and prepared as they face the many challenges of adolescence,” she stated.

Meta and ByteDance did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Social-media use by children and young people has been the topic of widespread discussion among parents, policymakers and educators. Earlier this week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill that bans social-media accounts for children under 14 and requires parental permission for 14- and 15-year-olds.

In Canada and elsewhere, there are growing concerns over the role social-media platforms play in cyberbullying, disrupted sleep patterns, brain development, and the inability of young people to focus.

A survey from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in 2021 found that 91 per cent of students in Grades 7 to 12 use social media daily, and about a third spend five hours or more daily on it. Researchers surveyed more than 2,000 Ontario students. Almost one-third reported being cyber-bullied at least once in the past year.

In their lawsuits, the four school boards said the companies “knew, or ought to have known, that the deliberate design of addictive and defective social-media products would interfere with students’ access to an education, negatively impact the learning environment, and create a public nuisance within the education system.”

Colleen Russell-Rawlins, education director of the Toronto District School Board, the country’s largest school board, said in an interview on Wednesday that social media has affected the education system in “very significant ways.”

“Students are not present,” she said, describing the addictive nature of social-media platforms. Educators are hearing about more incidents of cyberbullying. They are witnessing the rapid escalation of aggression that starts online. And they are helping students who are coping with anxiety and other mental health challenges.

The lawsuits, she said, are not just about raising awareness, but about protecting children by calling for safeguards and ensuring that school boards have the resources to help address the negative effects of increased social-media use.

“I think there’s no other childhood addiction that’s impacting children’s futures through education that we as educators and leaders would be expected to remain silent about. We feel compelled to act on behalf of our young people,” Ms. Russell-Rawlins said.

Pino Buffone, the education director at the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, echoed the sentiment, adding that the compulsive use of social media has further strained the finite resources of the school board. Educators and other school staff are being forced to manage behaviour that stems from social-media use.

“It has become clear that we need to hold social-media giants accountable,” Mr. Buffone said.

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