Witness urges strict definition, cites harms as House panel considers H.54 to limit social media in schools

A witness for the Social Media Victims Law Center told the House Education Committee on May 7 that Vermont students are being harmed by school use of social media and urged support for H.54, a bill to prohibit required student use of social media and limit student-facing platform features during the school day.

Laura, an attorney with the Social Media Victims Law Center, told the committee she and her organization have represented more than 4,000 children nationwide and that at least eight children in Vermont are among their clients. "Social media is not the Internet," she said, arguing the bill is written to preserve legitimate internet resources while barring features she described as addictive and exploitative.

The testimony centered on three problems the witness tied to in-school use: predatory access enabled by public school-associated pages, features that facilitate sextortion and resulting suicides, and product designs that she said are engineered for addictive engagement. She described cases she said involved Instagram and said her organization has tracked about 46 reported cases of sextortion-related deaths in the last three years. She gave two personal examples, citing a child named Selena Rodriguez and another student, Emma Clare, as representative of the harms she described.

Committee members pressed the witness about how to define "social media" in statutory text so the law would allow classroom use of noninteractive educational resources while barring platforms or features that direct-message, publish follower lists, or create school-specific rosters. Laura said the draft language already contains exceptions intended for news apps and school-managed publication tools and referenced subsections intended to exclude online products used solely to publish student journalism or educational materials.

Representative DeCamp asked whether technology exists to block social media while students are in school. Laura replied that platform owners such as Google and Apple could build device or account controls to limit in-school social media use, but she said they have no incentive to do so and that students frequently find ways to bypass school-installed restrictions. She also warned of disparate impacts, saying lower-income schools have fewer resources to deploy effective technical protections.

Laura told the committee that some schools that have gone phone- and social-media-free reported calmer lunches, more student interaction and fewer incidents of self-harm and anxiety. She urged lawmakers to prioritize student safety over the commercial interests of technology companies and said the state could revisit exemptions later if platforms made demonstrable safety improvements.

No formal action on H.54 was recorded in the hearing transcript. Committee members asked clarifying questions about statutory language and exceptions; the record does not show a vote or formal direction to staff.

The committee heard the witness for roughly the portion of the hearing captured in the transcript; additional testimony and any subsequent committee work on the bill were not recorded in the provided excerpt.