“Social media is driving a tremendous amount of anxiety and hurting kids in a number of different ways,” Healey said at a State House news conference. “These companies have designed products to be addictive and to exploit young people’s insecurities.”
Representatives for Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, Google, and TikTok did not immediately return requests for comment.
The proposal comes at a time of mounting tensions over the power, reach, and influence of social media platforms in daily life. In just the past few weeks, the corporate owners of Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube have lost major court cases that alleged the sites are purposely addictive or deceptive.
Numerous other states have also sought to impose controls on children’s use of social media sites. In Massachusetts, Healey’s proposals join a queue of legislation that Democrats say would impose some of the strictest requirements in the nation, but which critics charge could violate the Constitution and unnecessarily expand digital surveillance by the government.
“Social media platforms have already shown over the last decade that they are not responsible caretakers or protectors of our young people,” Healey said. “I want to take the power away from social media platforms and Big Tech companies and put it back in the hands of our young people and our families.”
Just last week, the House passed a measure imposing a social media ban on children under age 14, a move it argued would make Massachusetts laws among the strictest in the country.
It also approved language that would implement a bell-to-bell cellphone ban in K-12 schools, after the Senate passed similar legislation last year. The Senate last fall put forth a separate proposal to prohibit tech companies from selling children’s personal data.
Healey endorsed the under-14 total social media ban in the House legislation and said her proposed measures were “complementary” because they would include measures up to age 18, as well as specifically limit certain features on social media platforms.
That includes requiring the sites to limit users under 18 to two hours per day by changing the default setting for those users. It would also direct the companies to alter their default settings to deactivate features critics say make the sites so addictive, such as infinite scroll and autoplay, which allow users to view an endless stream of video content.
It’s unclear, however, how that would be enforced. For example, the two-hour daily limit would apply across all platforms, which are owned by different companies. The legislation she filed did not specify which social media platforms could be affected by her proposal.
Her bill would also require platforms to make changes for those under 18, including turning off location tracking and not allowing for notifications overnight and during school hours. The bill would also require parental consent for children 15 and under to change those settings. Default settings, however, can typically be adjusted by each user, and Healey noted in the bill that users 16 and older would be able to change those settings themselves.
Social media platforms would also have to publicly post aggregate data about users under 18, such as the amount of time they spend on the platforms, and require companies to survey those minors about whether they experienced harmful activity on those platforms.
Social media companies could face fines as high as $1 million for not following the outlined changes.
Healey announced the measures with support from the state’s largest teachers union and advocates who have campaigned for better privacy protections against tech companies.
“Our members are very clear: We need some consistent baseline policies on cellphone usage and social media across all districts, so it doesn’t fall on individual educators to make rules for their classrooms,” said Max Page, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, which represents 117,000 educators across the state.
Critics of those restrictions, however, expressed concerns over how social media companies would verify the ages of their users and whether that would lead to users giving tech companies more personal information.
“It was incredibly disappointing to hear the governor say that she supports the social media ‘ban’ legislation that just passed the House, which is completely unworkable, unconstitutional, and lets Big Tech off the hook while punishing parents and teens,” said Evan Greer, director of Fight for the Future, a digital rights advocacy group.
The governor first announced she would file legislation “proposing strict new social media requirements” for children under 18 during her State of the Commonwealth address, saying at the time they would include features such as mandatory age verification and disabling addictive features.
Massachusetts’ highest court ruled last Friday that the state could sue the technology giant Meta over allegations that its social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram, are too addictive to minors.
A California jury last month found that Meta and Google were negligent for creating products designed to hook young users without concern for their well-being.
In 2025, the vast majority of states proposed measures that were aimed at addressing social media use among children, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Measures in states such as Florida and Mississippi have since faced legal challenges that contend those restrictions violate the First Amendment.
Healey’s office said it consulted with the attorney general’s office to develop legislation that would withstand legal challenges.
For example, her office said that by specifically focusing on the platforms’ default settings and features would put the burden on tech companies to adhere to state law.
“Anyone who has used social media understands that the apps know a whole lot about you, not just from your use of the app, but from your use of the device off-app or from your use of other apps,” said Sarah Cable, a deputy attorney general in Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office.
“We are not tech people nor should we [be]. A law cannot do their jobs for them, but can set the standards,” Cable added. “They’re pretty smart people, and they ought to be able to figure it out.”
Anjali Huynh can be reached at anjali.huynh@globe.com.
