Louisiana lawmakers have passed a new bill that may affect access to the internet for minors in the state. The new measure would prohibit online platforms, including social networks, multiplayer games, and video-sharing apps, from allowing people under 18 years to create accounts without parental consent. Additionally, Louisiana parents would be allowed to cancel their child’s terms-of-service contracts on popular services, such as TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Fornite, and Roblox. The Louisiana bill would enforce the state’s existing contracting rules, which covers online content-sharing platforms accounts. The bill now awaits the approval of Gov. John Bel Edwards and will take effect from August 1, 2022, if passed.
In recent months, various state legislators have passed children’s online safety measures due to concerns about the mental health crisis among young people nationwide. For example, the new Utah law now requires social networks to obtain a parent’s consent before giving an account to anyone under 18 years of age. Similarly, the recently passed California law requires many sites to activate the highest privacy settings for minors.
The surgeon general also issued a public warning about the serious risks to young people’s mental health when using social media a couple of weeks ago, urging policymakers to limit access for children. Louisiana’s bill aims to help parents worried about their children encountering inappropriate content or spending excessive time online. However, industry group TechNet, whose members include Meta, Snap, Google, Amazon, Apple, and Uber, opposed the bill, saying it was too broad, could erode privacy, and cause unintended consequences.
Like Ms. Schlegel’s pornography bill, the new online contracting bill could also be widely adopted, with civil codes in many states having similar rules for contracts signed by minors. Five other states, namely Arkansas, Mississippi, Montana, Utah and Virginia, have passed similar age-verification laws for pornography sites. Republican lawmakers in Arkansas and Utah also recently signed measures requiring social media companies to verify a user’s age and obtain parental consent for minors to have accounts. However, civil liberties groups expressed concerns that the measures could restrict young people from accessing online information.
