{"id":309206,"date":"2026-07-29T21:46:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T21:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/309206\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T21:46:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T21:46:09","slug":"nys-social-media-ban-alone-wont-squash-kids-addictions-parents-need-to-step-up-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/309206\/","title":{"rendered":"NY’s social media ban alone won\u2019t squash kids’ addictions \u2014parents need to step up too"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York State has moved to protect kids from addictive social media platforms, announcing on Tuesday<\/a> that the SAFE for Kids Act has been finalized and will go into effect early next year.<\/p>\n

The law promises to stop social media companies from feeding kids personalized content via algorithms and sending them notifications deep into the night. But any parents hoping this will be a fix-all should think again. <\/p>\n

Similar legislation implemented around the country has been blocked by courts, and social media laws in other countries like Australia and the United Kingdom have proven that kids find ways around restrictions faster than the law can keep up.<\/p>\n

Governor Kathy Hochul and AG Letitia James announced the finalization of the SAFE for Kids Act on Tuesday. Bianca Otero\/Zuma \/ SplashNews.com<\/p>\n

Maybe the SAFE for Kids Act will keep some tweens<\/a> from being woken up by Instagram at 2 a.m., but parents beware: lawmakers can\u2019t be kids\u2019 online chaperones. It\u2019s up to family, educators, and community to hold the line.<\/p>\n

This week, Governor Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James announced the finalized version of the SAFE for Kids Act \u2014 short for \u201cStop Addictive Feeds Exploitation\u201d \u2014 and confirmed it will go into effect on January 25, 2027.<\/p>\n

The new law would prevent qualifying social media companies from presenting minors with an algorithmically personalized feed and would also bar them from delivering them notifications between midnight and 6 a.m.<\/p>\n

New York kids can only overrule the default setting if a parent consents, according to the law, which will be enforceable by civil penalties and age-verification processes, like government ID verification, facial age estimation, and checks against official records.<\/p>\n

The New York law would ban late-night social media notifications for minors. Suzi Media \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

Critics have warned that age verification<\/a> means that everyone is less free online, and that requiring users to prove their identities can jeopardize adults\u2019 right to go online and speak anonymously without government oversight.<\/p>\n

New York\u2019s law, to its credit, has attempted to placate concerns by giving platforms the option to choose \u201czero-knowledge\u201d age verification systems, which are cryptographic and don\u2019t share information with third parties except for a user\u2019s adult\/minor status.<\/p>\n

Even still, the law is vulnerable, and any parent who thinks it\u2019s a permanent fix should think again. Other states, like California and Arkansas, have tried to implement<\/a> similar notification curfews, only to be blocked by courts<\/a>, who deemed the regulations unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

Other laws attempting to ban minors from social media across the world have shown that wherever legislators have stood between kids and their apps, the kids find a way to circumvent them.<\/p>\n

An age verification requirement for certain online content in the UK was circumvented by many minors, according to a government report. Getty Images<\/p>\n

When Australia banned minors from social media in late 2025, many kids simply made new accounts, asked for help with bypassing restrictions, downloaded VPNs to change their geolocation data, and even used an older person\u2019s ID or put on makeup to trick age verification barriers \u2014 according to the government\u2019s own report<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A YouGov survey of Australian parents also found that<\/a> 27% reported their kids were switching over to alternative, less regulated platforms, meaning the law may have sent them to sketchier parts of the internet\u2019s Wild West \u2014 and those are just the parents who know what their kids are really doing online.<\/p>\n

When Britain enforced age checks for pornography and dangerous online material that same year, VPN downloads from Proton rose 1,200%<\/a>. The UK government\u2019s own investigation found that<\/a> 40% of 11 to 17-year-olds had circumvented age checks, as of this month.<\/p>\n

Of course, social media restrictions on kids do keep some of them offline. But here in New York there will surely be kids downloading VPNs, using parents\u2019 accounts to get on platforms, and flocking to unregulated websites to access the content they\u2019re after.<\/p>\n

The New York law applies to algorithmic feeds and social media notifications for minors. Matt Roberts\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not because New York lawmakers don\u2019t have kids\u2019 interests at heart, but because Albany will never be able to stand in for family and community in the battle to keep kids safe from online harm.<\/p>\n

Parents, families, schools, and community members need to step up. <\/p>\n

To give them their due, they have been trying: Schools around the country have been implementing bell-to-bell cell phone bans. More and more parents are keeping their kids off social media until they\u2019re old enough to scroll responsibly. Flip phones and dumb phones are having a moment. Even kids themselves are expressing a desire to unplug.<\/p>\n

But corrosive online material such as gambling, pornography, religious radicalization or school shooter manifestos spread insidiously online and the government can never be a stand-in for grassroots interventions \u2014 and parents shouldn\u2019t count on them to be their saviors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York State has moved to protect kids from addictive social media platforms, announcing on Tuesday that the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309207,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[235,426,232,9,11,10,49,51,50,299,4015,1601],"class_list":["post-309206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-gen-z","tag-kathy-hochul","tag-lifestyle","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-opinion","tag-social-media","tag-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}