For children’s accounts, the law bans certain features, including infinite scrolling, auto-play videos and targeted advertising.
COLUMBIA, S.C. — A South Carolina law will place restrictions on social media features for users under 16, including limits on tools designed to keep people continuously engaged with a platform.
The restrictions apply to social media companies that generate more than $1 billion in revenue. Under the law, platforms must take steps to determine the age of their users. People creating accounts will have to provide their birth date, while companies will also use technology to estimate a user’s age.
Some of the rules are already being implemented by companies as terms of a settlement of a lawsuit against Meta for social media harms to kids.
Rep. Brandon Guffey, R-York, said social media companies already use information about users to estimate their ages for advertising purposes.
“Truth of the matter is, these companies already know. No one’s sending adult diaper ads to a 13-year-old on social media. They know because they’re marketing to you,” Guffey said.
If a platform cannot determine with at least 80% confidence that a user is over 15, the account must be treated as belonging to a child.
For those accounts, the law bans certain features, including infinite scrolling, autoplay videos and targeted advertising.
Children’s accounts must also start with the platform’s most private settings.
Parents can choose to receive a dashboard showing how long their child is using the platform. The dashboard can also allow parents to set time limits and restrict when the account can be used.
Guffey said the law is intended in part to address concerns about social media features that encourage prolonged use.
“This generation is dubbed the anxious generation, and much of that is done from these addictive features that these companies have implemented,” Guffey said.
Some parents say they are concerned about the type of content children can encounter on social media.
Kimberly Long, whose oldest child recently started middle school, said she worries about what her children may be exposed to online.
“They could search something like fun parks in the area, or I don’t know what whatever kids search, you know, puppies and kittens. But then when they are fed content that has, you know, beauty things or dieting things like that, if they spend time looking at that, that is what the Instagram feed will show them,” Long said.
The law also addresses accounts belonging to children who do not have parental consent.
If a platform determines a user is under 16 and does not have parental consent, the company must take steps to terminate the account.
The user has 30 days to challenge that decision.
The law also allows parents and children to take legal action against social media platforms for certain violations.
