Desantis vetoes social media ban for kids under 16; lawmakers offer new option
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida Gov. Ron Desantis vetoed what would have been one of the most far-reaching social media bans for minors on Friday, and lawmakers are proposing new language that seeks to keep children under 14 off of addictive platforms.
The bill sent to the governor late last month would have banned minors under 16 from popular social media platforms regardless of parental consent. Desantis had concerns about privacy issues and parental rights, but appears to be on board with a new proposal that would allow 14- and 15-year-olds on social media with parental consent and ban access for younger children.
“The Legislature is about to produce a different, superior bill,” Desantis said in his veto message. “Protecting children from harms associated with social media is important, as is supporting parents’ rights and maintaining the ability of adults to engage in anonymous speech.”
He said he anticipates signing the new bill, which will go before the Senate on Monday, just days before the legislative session ends March 8.
Lawmakers were expecting the veto and worked with Desantis on the compromise. The issue is a top priority for Republican House Speaker Paul Renner, who believes social media is causing psychological damage to children.
“My personal view is we ought to go to 18. It is bad. It is poison,” Renner said. “Their business model is addiction that causes harm to children for profit. That’s not good.”
But Renner expressed optimism after the veto and said the new proposal is an improvement to the original bill and will have broader public support.
“It’s a good product of compromise,” he said. “It will have a better chance of getting through the courts.”
Over the last 18 months, other states have passed new online safety rules that would still allow younger teens to use social media.
Utah, Arkansas, Texas and Ohio last year passed laws that would compel social networks to verify users’ ages and obtain a parent’s permission before giving accounts to children under 16 or 18. In 2022, California passed a law that would require social networks and video game apps used by minors to turn on the highest privacy settings — and turn off certain features including auto-playing videos — by default for those young people.
The crackdown on social media stands out for being unusually bipartisan. California, a Democratic-led state, and Utah, a Republican-led state, each recently enacted landmark laws that take different approaches to protecting young people online. Separately, Florida last year became the first state to require public schools to ban student cellphone use during class time.
Balancing new social media restrictions with free speech rights can be tricky. Netchoice has successfully sued to halt the new laws in Arkansas, California and Ohio. Judges in those cases said the children’s online safety statutes most likely impinged on Netchoice members’ free speech rights to distribute information as well as young people’s rights to have access to it.
Supporters in Florida hope the bill will withstand legal challenges because it would ban social media formats based on addictive features such as notification alerts and autoplay videos, rather than on the content on their sites.