WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Florida lawmakers are advancing a bill that could change your child's access to social media. It would ban kids under 16 from having social media accounts.
Most of us spend a lot of time consumed with screens and social media. The harmful impacts on children are well documented, and now Florida lawmakers want to put an end to it. But some wonder if they are doing it the right way.
WPTV has heard from parents that social media is a problem. But is a state law banning it for minors under 16 the answer?
"We need to strike a balance, and this is not a balance. This is just a complete veto of access. And I just don't think that's appropriate, especially in the free state of Florida," said Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando.
Eskamani doesn't believe the bill proposed is constitutional. It appears to put the responsibility on the social media platforms to enforce the ban. It requires those platforms to use "reasonable age verification methods to confirm the age of the account holder," as well as terminate accounts of those under 16.
Ian Marlow, the CEO of FitechGelb, a cyber security firm based in Boca Raton, sees some trouble with that.
"So many of these things are going to be very difficult to enforce because of the plethora of fake accounts that are created across the board," Marlow said. "From a technical aspect, there's going to be quite an issue to police it properly."
The bill doesn't name any social media platforms in particular, only describing the features of the platform that would make it off limits.
"We've directed the bill not toward content, but addictive technology," said Paul Renner, R-House Speaker. "The reason we defined it that way is these are the things harming children."
In a letter to Florida lawmakers, leaders from Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, pushed back against the bill, saying requiring age verification would raise data privacy and security concerns for every Floridian.
Meta also said it feels parents should be in control of their child's access, and leaders are calling for federal legislation that would require parental consent at the app store level for teens under 16 to download an app.
