“This ban would be among the most restrictive in the entire country, helping to protect young people from harmful content and addictive algorithms that have a proven negative impact on their mental health,” House Speaker Ron Mariano and state Representative Aaron Michlewitz, the House’s budget chief, said in a joint statement.
“The simple reality is that Massachusetts must do more to ensure that our laws keep pace with modern challenges — especially when it comes to protecting our children, and to setting students up for success in the classroom and beyond,” the Democrats said.
The House’s proposed ban comes months after Governor Maura Healey said she, too, would seek to restrict social media access for young people. Healey’s office said she would hold her own news conference Tuesday to unveil a bill creating “strong protections for teens on social media.”
The state Senate last fall unveiled a separate proposal that would ban tech companies from selling children’s personal data. Last summer, it passed its own version of a bill that would ban cellphone usage in schools.
After the House votes Wednesday on its legislation, the two chambers would have to reach an agreement on the proposals before sending a final version to the governor’s desk.
Lawmakers in both chambers and other Democratic leaders have discussed measures to reduce technology use among minors at several points during the legislative session. Healey and Attorney General Andrea Campbell also both support bell-to-bell bans on cellphone use in schools.
Scott Hadland, chief of adolescent and young adult medicine at Mass General Brigham, said the House’s proposal targeting social media use “makes a lot of sense based on the science.” He and other physicians have found that “the later that social media is introduced, the better” to protect young people’s mental health and prevent other “downstream outcomes.”
“Social media is not all bad, and smartphones are not all bad,” Hadland said, “but I think that we need to reel back the unfettered access that young people have had to social media and to tech. And this is a key opportunity for us to do so.”
The House’s bill would mandate that school districts put policies in place to prohibit student use of personal electronic devices during the school day, according to a summary released by Mariano’s office.
The legislation would also require state education officials to provide districts guidance on how to model a ban and create a pilot program for 10 school districts to make students’ personal devices “inoperable on school grounds during the school day.”
Similar to the cellphone ban legislation the Senate passed, the House bill includes some carveouts for students with health challenges. It also requires schools to provide ways for students to contact a parent or guardian, said state Representative Kenneth Gordon, who chairs the Legislature’s Education Committee.
The goal, Michlewitz said, would be to implement the cellphone policy around the time the school year starts this fall.
The House’s proposed social media ban would also take root relatively quickly.
House lawmakers said they would leave details of how the ban would be enforced to Campbell, whom they tasked with crafting regulations by Sept. 1. The policy would go into effect Oct. 1, according to lawmakers.
“We leave a lot of it up to the AG in terms of regulations on exactly how to actually institute that, because, frankly, this is a moving target,” Michlewitz told reporters at the State House. “We want to make sure that regulations, as opposed to putting in the statute, will allow that flexibility.”
Gray Milkowski, a spokesperson for Senate President Karen Spilka, praised the House for joining the Senate in backing a cellphone ban in schools, calling the proposal “an important step to support the mental health of our students and help them succeed academically.”
He also said that Spilka “is excited to review” the House’s proposal for a social media ban.
Healey, during her State of the Commonwealth address in January, said she would propose restrictions on social media apps, including requiring parental consent and age verification measures on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok.
Hours after the House announced its bill, Healey’s office released her schedule showing plans for a Tuesday event on her efforts to “create safer online experiences for young people across Massachusetts.” It did not immediately release details about her proposed bill.
Last year, the vast majority of states proposed measures aimed at studying or curbing social media use among children amid longtime concerns about the platforms’ effects on their mental health, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
State attorneys general, including Campbell, have also sued social media companies, including Meta and TikTok, alleging those platforms intentionally used features they knew were addictive to children.
In a landmark social media addiction case last month, a court determined Meta and Google were negligent, after a young user argued the companies created products that were addictive in ways similar to cigarettes or casinos, capable of leading to anxiety and depression.
Measures to implement age restrictions on social media, however, have faced legal challenges, arguing that the restrictions violate the First Amendment.
More than a dozen states had enacted laws restricting at least some minors from social media platforms as of February, according to the Age Verification Providers Association.
Some representatives for social media companies have argued that these bans open the door for less-regulated platforms to proliferate. That was the case in Australia, the first country to implement a social media ban for children under 16, where teenagers began looking for alternatives to restricted social media giants including Facebook and YouTube.
Still, several state laws have held up in court — at least, for now.
In 2024, Florida passed legislation that bars children under 14 from having social media accounts, which a federal judge blocked last June. A federal appeals court recently allowed Florida to continue enforcing the law while it makes its way through the courts.
Similarly, last August, the Supreme Court declined to block a Mississippi law that banned minors from using social media sites such as Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube without parental consent.
Michlewitz acknowledged there “could be some potential legal challenges” but said he’s confident the law would hold up in court.
“We think we are on solid ground,” the North End Democrat said.
Kelly Garrity of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Anjali Huynh can be reached at anjali.huynh@globe.com.
