Is Utah’s First-in-the-Nation Social Media Crackdown Pioneering or a Nanny State Overreach Destined to Die in the Courts?
Did the home of the Silicon Slopes just lob a policy bomb across the bow of big tech? Seems so, but Republican lawmakers don’t just aim to survive a counterattack — they see the Beehive State’s strict new social media laws, drawn to protect minors from addictive platforms, as a harbinger for red (and blue) state legislatures, and eventually the federal government itself.
Utah’s first-of-its-kind social media restrictions, gleefully signed last month by Gov. Spencer Cox, created viral-like buzz for industry watchers, parents, politicians, legal scholars, and privacy advocates, who fear a proliferation at the expense of teens’ freedom of speech.
The governor and some parent groups lauded the controversial measures as a necessary first step in establishing parental control over apps like TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram, widely blamed for exasperating the mental health crisis afflicting kids everywhere.
Those applauding the move suggest it is also strategic. Whether or not the country’s first social media crackdown survives a court challenge, they argue it puts pressure on both Congress and prominent tech companies to pursue safeguards that help shield teens.
“The politics of it are interesting,” says Kelly Patterson, political science professor at Brigham Young University and senior scholar with the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy. “It’s bipartisan. It shows a willingness to take a difficult public policy issue and try to do something — not just sit back and do nothing.”
But critics across the tech sector and civil liberties communities have pounced. They insist the laws that impose age verification and time limits on social media use infringe on teens’ privacy and rights to free speech. If implemented in March of 2024, “the majority of young Utahns will find themselves effectively locked out of much of the web,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a statement.
Utah’s legislative push to protect the mental health of youth comes amid the growing chorus of politicians nationwide fixated on banning Chinese-owned TikTok from state-issued devices to protect individuals from invasive data collection by the app. Some Utah lawmakers have called for such a ban — and Cox in December ordered a TikTok ban on state-owned devices — which represents a two-front battle on the fate of certain social media usage.
For now, Cox’s priority appears to be the safety of the kids. But by leading out with the new laws and TikTok declaration, Utah should have a prominent seat in the collective social media conversation.
“Utah’s leading the way in holding social media companies accountable,” Cox posted the day of the bill signing, “and we’re not slowing anytime soon.”
Visionary? Unconstitutional? And What About Enforcement?
At its root, the new laws require age verification for anyone under 18 to join social media, prevents using social media from 10:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. without parental permission, and offers the opportunity to sue companies on behalf of children who claim they were harmed by social media. The language also requires social media companies ensure their apps are not designed to become addicting to minors.
The package seeks to reduce the risk of cyberbullying, online grooming, and exposure to hate speech, graphic content, and rampant misinformation.
“In Utah, we care deeply about our teens’ mental health,” Sen. Mike McKell, the Senate sponsor, said upon passage. “Since 2009, depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation has drastically increased among minors in Utah and across the United States. Utah is leading the way to fight back against the harms of social media and providing parents with more resources and controls.”
The Senate bill also blocks direct messages to minors without being “friends” on the platform and prevents social media giants from collecting and selling data on minors.
Some 64 percent of U.S. adults say social media has a mostly negative impact on life in this country, but 72 percent maintain at least one account, according to the Pew Research Center.
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study found six in 10 teenage girls felt persistently sad or hopeless in 2021 and that 30 percent of females in 9th through 12th grade have “seriously contemplated suicide.”
Bullish on Utah’s polarizing new laws, Cox recently appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” to both make his defense and start to shape the narrative on what could soon play out in states across the country and in Washington, D.C.
“There is no other industry where we allow 14-year-olds to contract with major corporations to use their data for anything they want. We just don’t do this,” Cox said. “We’re going to look back 10 years from now and think, ‘what did we do? We destroyed a generation of kids with this stuff.’”
Cox told host Chuck Todd that he expects court challenges but is confident Utah will prevail. By not implementing the law for nearly another year, it will give the state time to write regulations that protect users’ privacy, he noted, while still addressing the mental health crisis among teens.
“We don’t expect that we’re going to be able to prevent every young person from getting around this,” Cox said. “Kids are really smart…I would prefer that Congress act. That’s where this should happen, and I think it will.”
Research has shown how simple it is for kids to get around age requirements on social media. Right now, the industry standard is to ask users to confirm they are at least 13 before using the platform. But asking for date of birth can be bypassed if minors use someone else’s identification. Kids can also link their account to someone else who is registered as an adult.
Ulterior Motives, Hypocrisy and Praise
Though Utah was first, a smattering of states including Texas, Ohio, Arkansas, Louisiana, and New Jersey are considering similar legislative steps. The nonprofit Common Sense Media, an advocate for more child friendly online media encourages more states to “hold social media companies accountable to ensure kids across the country are protected online.”
Patterson, the BYU professor, says being first allows Utah to work out kinks in the law and to help other states as they draft their legislation. He also predicts it could help Cox extend his expertise with the National Governor’s Association, where he is active.
“The state has a reputation for caring about families and children,” Patterson says. “This was clearly an opportunity for the state to at least try to address the problem.”
Asked if he thought an ulterior motive of the laws was to signal to tech titans that better social media regulations are not negotiable, Patterson said “whether a signal was included or not, that’s how the tech companies will take it.”
“They wouldn’t be doing their jobs if they didn’t pay attention to what the states are doing.”
The social media behemoths have not yet telegraphed plans to challenge the laws, but legal experts anticipate legal battles in the near future.
Privacy advocates worry that giving parents access to their children’s posts can compromise kids in abusive situations and endanger LGBTQ youth. And how do you square requiring minors share more personal data to verify identity against all the evidence of exploitative advertising and data mining from major tech companies?
Utah will soon require online services to collect sensitive information about teens and families, not only to verify ages, but to verify parental relationships, like government-issued IDs and birth certificates, putting their private data at risk of breach,” Nicole Saad Bembridge, an associate director with tech lobby NetChoice said in a statement.
There is also the question in Utah about the hypocrisy of Republican lawmakers bemoaning government intervention into private lives on one hand, while enacting such restrictions in this case.
“Government overreach,” Tomika Griggs commented on the governor’s Facebook page. “It’s not your business what parents allow their children to do!”
“If the state cared about the mental health of teenagers, they’d fund public schools better to develop mental health programs, they’d address climate problems in Utah, they wouldn’t be weaponizing the state against trans kids, and they’d do something about gun violence,” Chase Judd posted. “This will only end in an expensive lawsuit that the state will lose.”
Jeremy Stanley argues similar laws requiring age verification have been struck down, predicting the same fate here. “If the law is upheld,” he posted, “I imagine companies will weigh the cost of implementing parental access requirements against the size of Utah’s market and decide to just block all Utah IP addresses instead.”
“Sounds like we’re shoveling tax money into the furnace,” Samuel Morishita added.
But Cox’s online crackdown didn’t get completely panned online.
“This isn’t controlling: it’s giving ability and insight back to parents — taking it away from social media creeps,” Scott Henderson posted. “Social media companies, and the predators who use social media to access their victims, should not have access to children without their parent’s knowledge.”
“I’m glad the state is stepping up and leaving the federal government out of it,” Leie Rasmussen added. “Some kids just don’t have good parents, and they need to be protected as well.”
Tick Tock, TikTok
A couple weeks before Christmas, Cox issued an executive order that prohibited TikTok on all state-owned electronic devices — mirroring a move from myriad government leaders citing privacy concerns.
“China’s access to data collected by TikTok presents a threat to our cybersecurity,” Cox said when issuing the order. “As a result, we’ve deleted our TikTok account and ordered the same on all state-owned devices. We must protect Utahns and make sure that the people of Utah can trust the state’s security systems.”
Grilled before Congress last month, TikTok CEO Shou Chew surprised lawmakers during a five-hour televised hearing by announcing the popular video-sharing app claimed more than 150 million users in the United States, 50 million more than thought. Owned and operated by ByteDance, a company headquartered in China, TikTok may be a vehicle to deliver personal data, intellectual property or proprietary information of users, U.S. officials and lawmakers maintain.
Even so, the majority of TikTok users are young people, comprised by a combination of Millennials and Gen Z, who are digital natives not necessarily concerned with alleged privacy violations by tech companies. Is the personal data of the average Gen Z American really compromising national security, critics of the ban wonder? Instead, wouldn’t it make more sense to limit the restrictions to government devices, not teenagers posting goofy TikTok challenges?
Recently introduced House and Senate legislation calls for a full ban of the social media app in the U.S., noting ByteDance is subject to China’s law obligating companies and people to comply with government requests for data, even if they occur in secret.
The fear, government officials cite, is that locations and online identities could land in the lap of the Chinese Communist Party.
Earlier this year, the White House banned the popular app from government-issued devices. Britain, the European Union, Canada, and other countries have done the same.
But the debate over banning the country’s No. 1 social media app has birthed an unusual coalition. Right-wing conservatives and progressive liberals have joined forces to defend the short-video sharing platform.
Rep. Rand Paul, (R-KY) announced in the Louisville Courier Journal that he opposes a ban on TikTok, calling it a form of censorship that would “emulate China’s speech bans.”
Firebrand progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, (D-NY) went on TikTok itself to decry the ban with a video viewed more than two million times. She notes banning a social media platform is unprecedented and that Congress should receive a classified briefing about any national security risks.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson went further. He derided the potential TikTok ban as a bill that would give “enormous and terrifying new powers to the federal government to punish American citizens and regulate how they communicate with one another.”
Contrast that with a statement from the American Civil Liberties Union — not much of a contrast — that called the legislation vague and overbroad.
“Whether we’re discussing the news of the day, live streaming protests, or even watching cat videos, we have a right to use TikTok and other platforms to exchange our thoughts, ideas, and opinions with people around the country and around the world,” the statement read.
Will Utah have a prominent chair at the international chat about banning TikTok? The chances go up exponentially should the laws governing youth social media use survive the courts.
Generation Luddite
How often do you hear Gen Z described as Luddites? The answer, 100 percent, should be never. Yet in Brooklyn, there exists such a thing as the Luddite Club, a group of Wes Anderson-ian teens who have raged against the machine by swapping their smartphones for flip phones. Exhausted by technology swallowing too much of their lives, the Luddite Club took their name from the 19th-century English textile workers who destroyed the machines they saw as threatening their livelihoods.
This phenomenon, where teens are ditching social media for face-to-face conversations and primitive cell phones, may seem obscure. But the trend is picking up steam by so-called “screenagers” who’ve grown tired of snapping selfies and the mindless scrolling.
When these teens meet at their local libraries, there is only one rule: no smartphones. What they cherish is the time to think creatively, to have more time to read, and to enjoy better concentration. Once you’ve given up Instagram, it’s not a far stretch to prefer old school phone calls to texting.
“If I have one overarching message for my fellow teenagers, it’s this: spend more time getting to know yourself and exploring the world around you,” a Luddite Club member tells The New York Times. “It’s so much more fulfilling — and so much more real — than the one inside your expensive little box.”
The link between teen reports of depression and anxiety and smartphone use has become clear, according to social scientists.
Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, is perhaps the researcher most associated with the concept that smartphones are dangerous to teens. She’s the author of the book: iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy — and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood — and What That Means for the Rest of Us.
“At first, when I saw these trends in loneliness and unhappiness and depression starting to spike around 2011 or 2012, I really had no idea what could possibly be causing this. It was a real mystery,” she tells NPR. Then, she says, she took note of Pew research that showed 2012 was the first year that most cell phone owners had switched to smartphones.
Between a government crackdown on one end and an organic uprising on the other, a generation tech backlash is not that far-fetched. If such a thing actually materialized, few would argue the mental health benefits.
Bipartisanship Lives
During his “Meet the Press” interview, Cox made sure to point out that protecting minors against the scourge of social media enjoys bipartisan support. Conservative Republican lawmakers like Chris Stewart, he noted, have been on the same page as the Biden White House in their shared desire to facilitate protections and boost teen mental health.
“We have countless protections for our children in the physical world — car seats, seat belts, and minimum ages for drinking, driving and more,” Rep. Chris Stewart tweeted. “The damage to Gen Z from social media is undeniable — so why are there no protections in the digital world?
This line of thinking is being echoed across the political aisle, especially as society comes to grips with the mental toll a three-year pandemic has wrought on the nation’s youth. Isolation during Covid translated to a significant spike in screen time, which, in turn, has led to increases in depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation.
During his State of the Union address, President Biden urged Congress to pass legislation banning data collection and targeted ads for children and young people by big tech. Biden bemoaned “discriminatory algorithmic decision-making” that “too often return harmful content, including pornography rather than role models, toys, or activities.”
This is an area, an administrative spokesman said, “where the president believes that there is possibility to find agreement.”
“A year in politics is often an eternity,” Patterson notes. “There could be movement in the states, in Congress. Boy, I think in the end we can say public policy is a long process…It’s never, ever over until it actually starts.”
Will social media regulation be the breakthrough issue for a Washington crippled by polarization and zero-sum games?
If the teenage Luddite Club is real, stranger things have happened.
