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April 4, 2026, 5:01 a.m. MT
- Arizona lawmakers are considering bipartisan legislation to restrict social media access for minors under 15 without parental consent.
- The proposed bills would also require age verification for websites and apps with content deemed “harmful to minors.”
- Opponents, including civil liberty groups and tech companies, raise concerns about First Amendment rights, data security, and privacy.
As state and federal juries issued landmark verdicts in March holding social media companies liable for harming minors, Arizona lawmakers were considering how to protect kids here.
The concern over social media’s detrimental effects on mental health, bullying, self harm and sleep disruption run so deep that both Republicans and Democrats at the state Capitol appear open to banning social media for teenagers under 15 without parental permission. Lawmakers have proposed two methods so far.
They also have considered requiring age-verification for websites and apps with a “substantial” amount of content considered “harmful to minors” — a legal term with criteria that is supposed to limits kids’ access to certain material while also balancing’ educational and artistic value.
But while surveys and polls show most American parents support policies to limit and rein in kids’ social media use, laws doing so have faced repeated legal challenges for violating the First Amendment.
Age verification and banning kids’ access to social media could impose burdens on adults’ constitutional speech rights. Civil liberty groups and constitutional law scholars have warned that different interpretations of “harmful to minors” could sweep in and chill protected expression.
Opponents to the Arizona legislation say it threatens data security, undermines online anonymity and could lead to privacy-invasive questions to confirm parental consent.
Jose Torres of TechNet, a trade group representing companies like Google, Meta and Netflix, told lawmakers at a Senate Regulatory Affairs and Government Efficiency Committee meeting in February that custody issues could complicate verifying parental consent, for example.
A spokesperson from Meta said the proposed law would send teens to less regulated sites that are more dangerous.
But a recent case at the U.S. Supreme Court could indicate an opening for these regulations, and the bills’ sponsors, Sen. Shawnna Bolick, R-Phoenix, and Rep. Michael Carbone, R-Buckeye, appear to have put the prospect of legal challenges at the center of their efforts.
“The intent here is to do it the right way,” Carbone told House members in March. A month earlier, he said he was “being purposeful and deliberate,” working with stakeholders and lawmakers across the aisle to “get something across that we all can agree on and will hold up in a constitutional manner.”
Bipartisan support has happened as a result.
Two Democrats joined Republicans in the Senate to pass Bolick’s bill, and more than half of House Democrats joined Republicans to approve Carbone’s bill. The bills are identical but haven’t made their way to the governor’s desk. Changes to the legislation are expected.
The strong bipartisan support coupled with Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs’ passage of an age-verification law for pornographic websites last year from Rep. Nick Kupper, R-Surprise, could indicate the teen ban has a shot of becoming law.
Hobbs’ office declined to comment on the legislation.
How Arizona would restrict social media for teenagers
The social media restrictions in House Bill 2991 and Senate Bill 1747 have undergone several changes in the last month and more could come.
The latest version of the bills said app stores would need to “determine or estimate” the age of new and existing users, and if they were younger than 16, prevent them from downloading or accessing a pre-downloaded app until parental consent was obtained.
App developers, such as Meta or TikTok, would also be expected to comply with the age minimums, and would rely on the age findings from the app stores.
The latest version of the bills said both app stores and individual app developers would need to secure parental consent for kids 15 and younger. It would put the onus on the app store to determine users’ age.
App developers would have to provide certain safeguards and parental controls for accounts held by minors. Some include allowing parents to set kids’ daily time limits on the app, preventing their kids from sending their geolocation to other users, and other controls for who and how they engage with others.
Companies that violated the rules could face civil lawsuits from minors or their parents for “actual damages” or $1,000 per violation, whichever is bigger, plus “punitive damages if the violation was egregious.” The attorney general could seek a civil penalty of $75,000 per violation.
Carbone and Bolick declined interview requests from The Arizona Republic. Both said they would talk after all the details were sorted out.
What the bill’s age verification requirement would do
The bill’s age verification section would:
- Require “standard” or “anonymous age verification” if a “substantial portion” of an app’s content is “harmful to minors.” It does not specify what counts as “substantial.”
- Prevent people younger than 18 from accessing material “harmful to minors.”
- Ensure third-party anonymous age-verification companies don’t store personally identifying information after the age has been verified and don’t use the information for any other purpose.
Court decision pending for Florida law Arizona’s bill modeled after
At least 17 states had passed laws reining in social media access for minors as of February 2026, according to the Age Verification Providers Association. Many of those requiring parental consent for teen usage were challenged in court and are facing injunctions, which are court orders preventing their enforcement.
The proposed Arizona ban was modeled after Florida’s House Bill 3, which bars anybody under 16 from using some social media platforms, except for 14- and 15-year-olds who obtained parental permission.
Associations representing platforms like Google, YouTube, Meta and Snapchat filed a federal lawsuit immediately after Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it into law in 2024, saying it limits users’ access to content lawfully protected by the First Amendment.
The First Amendment protects speech unless it falls into certain categories. Federal courts have held that some material can be unprotected for minors but not adults. When that’s the case, states can restricts kids’ access — but not that of adults.
While a federal district judge said Florida’s law was “likely unconstitutional,” two federal appeals court judges disagreed. A decision is pending at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where oral arguments were heard March 10.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2025 case Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, which upheld a Texas law requiring age verification for pornographic websites, has paved the way for lawmakers to propose additional policies that infringe on adults’ free speech rights when the intent is protecting children.
Stephany Matat, First Amendment reporter at the Tallahassee Democrat, contributed to this report.
Taylor Seely is a First Amendment Reporting Fellow at The Arizona Republic / azcentral.com. Do you have a story about the government infringing on your First Amendment rights? Reach her at tseely@arizonarepublic.com or by phone at 480-476-6116.
Seely’s role is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
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