Pa. senators call for requiring parental consent for youth’s use of social media
Two Pennsylvania state senators are proposing legislation to build guardrails around kids’ use of social media accounts.
The proposal, which grows out of increasing concern over the impact the technology is having on youth’s mental health, would require parental consent for minors up through age 16 to open a new social media account.
If enacted into law, this proposed bill also would ban data mining for any social media user under the age of 18. It further would allow parents or legal guardians to sue social media companies for harm done to their child.
The bipartisan-backed measure to be offered by Sens. Kristin Phillips-Hill, R-York County, and Vincent Hughes, D-Philadelphia, is modeled after legislation introduced in other states including Ohio and Connecticut as well as the proposed federal Clean Slate for Kids Online Act. That federal legislation seeks to give people a right to demand that internet companies delete all personal information collected from or about a person when they were under age 13.
In a memo to their Senate colleagues seeking support for their proposed bill,
Phillips-Hill and Hughes wrote, “We are facing a mental health crisis in the commonwealth. The data shows far too many minors are struggling with mental health, a fact laid bare during the COVID pandemic, and that social media is a contributing factor.”
Moreover, Phillips-Hill said young people particularly those age 15 and under may not think about the longterm consequences of what they post online and its potential impact on future job or college applications and that’s why she believes parental guidance is necessary.
“I think this is a good way to empower Pennsylvania parents as well as help address the mental health crisis that we’re seeing in the commonwealth and the fact that so many folks have attributed a lot of these challenges to social media,” she said.
A 2022 Pew Research Center survey found 35% of 13- to 17-year olds reported using YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat or Facebook “almost constantly,” with TikTok and Snapchat being the most popular with this age group. A similar Pew survey conducted in 2018 found about a quarter of young teens found social media had a mostly negative effect on their life.
Further driving the senators’ desire to clamp down on teens’ social media usage was Bucks County’s decision to join a class-action lawsuit against four social media giants. In it, the county alleges TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and Facebook have inflicted harm on the mental health of the county’s children and caused an uptick in behavioral issues.
They seek unspecified monetary damage for the increased cost to the county to provide mental health services to address its youth’s growing level of despair and to pay for law enforcement resources resulting from social media-related misbehavior.
The proposed Senate bill also would require parents and guardians to be notified if a new social media account was opened by a minor under the age of 16 without their consent and it would allow individuals to request information collected about them while they were under the age of 18 to be deleted.
Phillips-Hill recently saw her bill prohibiting TikTok on state-owned devices and networks unanimously pass the Senate. PennLive’s survey of state agencies in December found they have already taken steps to curtail commonwealth devices from accessing that site.