The challengers lost in court, so Florida’s law banning young teens from having their own social media accounts can now go into effect.
Passed with bipartisan support, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed HB 3 into law in March of 2024. The law bans kids 14 and under from creating social media accounts, and 15-year-olds need parental permission to open an account.
Is this a good idea?
“Well, I don’t think it’s a bad one,” said Dr. David Bjorklund, psychology professor at FAU. “I think having parents know what their kids are getting into and having some control over their exposure is a good thing.”
However, Bjorklund says, the law goes against the grain of a society in love with social media apps.
“Social media is addictive in the sense that it hits all the right cues for adolescents who are very much oriented to social interactions, social relations, social evaluations and it’s right there at their fingertips,” Bjorklund said.
Parents like Nancy Fry, who has an 8th grader and a 4th grader, have to deal with social media issues all the time.
“I really appreciate that this legislation puts guardrails into place ‘cause not every kid has an adult in their life who is technologically savvy or understands what’s going on on the internet,” Fry said. “That being said, I am very concerned when the state government tries to supersede the rights and responsibilities of a parent.”
Fry said she hopes the law will force social media companies to do more to protect kids. The law’s backers say social media use contributes to adolescent depression, anxiety, and bullying.
“And when it’s used by children who don’t have the maturity to understand who they’re talking to or evaluate the messages they’re getting, that’s where the problems come in,” Bjorklund said.
He added that additional problems are caused by social media replacing face-to-face interactions, and when kids take their phones to bed.
“Interfering with sleep, which interferes with an awful lot of cognitive social functioning, kids are just not getting enough sleep and social media is one of the reasons; they need to have some more time with friends and activities that don’t involve social media,” Bjorklund said.
One question, however, that keeps coming up is, how will the state enforce the law? In the meantime, an industry group representing several social media companies has filed a motion in federal court, saying, once again, that the law violates the First Amendment.