Politics |

DeSantis signs social media ban for children, a law certain to draw legal challenge

TALLAHASSEE —  Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday signed a sweeping social media ban for Florida children that’s almost certain to be challenged in court by technology companies and First Amendment advocates as unconstitutional.

The law bans kids under age 14 from having social media accounts but parents can allow 14- and 15-year-olds to log on. Anyone 16 or older can have an account.

“One thing that strikes me as someone with a background as a prosecutor, you look at young kids, you know there’s dangers, predators out there,” DeSantis said at a signing ceremony in Jacksonville. “Now with social media, you can have a kid in the house safe, seemingly, and you can have predators that can get in there right into your own home and manipulate them.”

DeSantis and House Speaker Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, said they believe the law will withstand legal challenges because the bipartisan-supported measure is focused on the addictive aspects of unnamed social media platforms and not on content.

“You will find nothing addressing good speech or bad speech,” said Renner, who made passage of the social media ban a top priority. “What we did address were the addictive features that keep people on for hours… a personalized algorithm curating content for children, encouraging them to stay on for a few more hours a day, nudging them in a very dark direction.”

Those include infinite scrolling, “the lights and hearts that give you a dopamine hit, a drug hit to the brain,” he said. They also allow children to upload personal information to the websites, he said.

But critics say the age limits are arbitrary and that age-verification ID requirements are vague and confusing.

The industry group NetChoice had urged DeSantis to veto the measure, arguing it would violate First Amendment rights. Spokeswoman Krista Chavez said in an email Monday that the group does not publicly discuss legal strategy, but it quickly recirculated the veto request and earlier statements about the constitutionality of the bill.

“An unconstitutional law will protect exactly zero Floridians,” Carl Szabo, NetChoice’s vice president and general counsel,” said in a statement. “HB 3 is also bad policy because of the data collection on Floridians by online services it will, in effect, require. This will put their private data at risk of breach.”

The nation’s highest court has found that statutes restricting constitutionally protected speech will fail if “less restrictive alternatives would be at least as effective in achieving the legitimate purpose that the statute was enacted to serve,” said Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando.

A federal judge in Ohio last month stopped the state from carrying out a similar new law that requires social media companies to get parental permission to let their children under 16 use their platforms.

“Though I agree more needs to be done in protecting our youth on social media, this bill goes too far in taking away parents’ rights and banning social media usage — and thus First Amendment Rights — for young Floridians,” Eskamani said.

The original social media ban introduced this session, HB1, was vetoed by DeSantis for some of those very reasons, but most of all because he said he thought the bill robbed parents of their authority to decide what’s best for their children.

The revised version, HB 3, lowered the age from 16 to 14 but a coalition of First Amendment, Big Tech and human rights organizations said don’t go far enough.

The organizations, which include PEN America, Chamber of Progress, PRISM, the First Amendment Foundation, ACLU of Florida, the Trevor Project, NetChoice, and LGBT Tech, said the new version still fails to achieve the state’s duty to protect minors.

The group said the new law “deprives Florida’s youth of critical resources, support networks, and personal and academic growth.”

They said the bill could actually hurt at-risk youth who use social media sites to ask for help, create connections, and find resources and support online when experiencing dangerous or abusive home environments.

“Lawmakers shouldn’t be controlling what ideas and information parents can allow their children to access. This is government overreach,” said Kara Gross, legislative director of the ACLU of Florida. “The internet, including social media platforms, contains vast amounts of constitutionally protected speech for both adults and minors. Blanket bans infringe upon our constitutional rights.”

DeSantis acknowledged that several recent Florida laws trying to control the internet and social media companies have faced legal challenges, even from judges appointed by Republicans, wracking up millions of dollars in legal bills for the state’s taxpayers.

Last year’s bill allowing people to sue Big Tech companies who censor them for their postings has been challenged to the U.S. Supreme Court, and a key portion of the Stop Woke Act was stopped by courts that ruled it violated corporations’ First Amendment rights.

News Service of Florida contributed to this report.