Senate institutions committee hears testimony on S.69 age-appropriate design bill; members weigh narrow exemptions

The Senate Institutions Committee heard expert testimony and debated amendments to S.69, an "age-appropriate design" bill intended to limit online product designs that experts say increase risks to children and teens.

Dr. Jenny Radeski, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Michigan Medical School, testified in support of S.69 and described a range of harms she said are associated with platform design features. She told the committee that contact harms such as cyberbullying and online sexual solicitation are common; she cited studies showing nearly half of U.S. teens report bullying and about 60% of teens who play video games have experienced bullying. She said profiling and targeted advertising can steer minors toward gambling or alcohol marketing, and that design features — including weak privacy settings, anonymous interfaces, recommendation algorithms and visible like/follower counts — can increase grooming risk and prompt self-generated sexual imagery among minors.

"Designs are a really important opportunity for creating a safer, digital media ecosystem for kids," Radeski told the committee. She also described sleep disruption and compulsive use linked to push notifications, infinite scroll, autoplay and recommendation systems, and cited estimates from her testimony that problematic or impairing digital-media use occurs in a minority but measurable share of youth: roughly 4–6% of children 5–9, up to 19% of teens in some samples, and 9–11% of some college-age samples; in one cited sample more than one-third of 11–15-year-old girls said they felt addicted to social media.

Committee counsel Rick Segal summarized a proposed committee amendment that would add an exclusion for entities that "control or process the personal data of not more than 100,000 consumers in the previous calendar year." "So it's pretty simple. We are really just adding an exemption to the bill," Segal said. The amendment is framed as a way to remove small Vermont businesses from the bill's regulatory reach; committee members noted the threshold (about one-sixth of Vermont's population) would limit coverage to relatively large firms or multistate platforms.

Members debated whether the bill should be narrowed to target only "social media platforms" or kept broader to include other online services. Several senators urged narrowing to social media to focus on the services most implicated in testimony; others warned a narrowly targeted definition might invite constitutional challenges. The committee discussed additional carve-outs for heavily regulated industries such as banking, insurance and health care; witnesses and senators noted federal rules (including HIPAA for health data) may overlap with some requirements and that tightly regulated sectors sometimes need special handling for fraud-prevention and transaction processing.

Committee members also raised platform-design specifics: whether required privacy notices must be "prominently" presented on websites and apps, how to treat proprietary software or trade secrets, and whether parents or guardians should be able to view certain account signals for minors. Committee discussion included proposed language to allow a parental-observation signal that would let guardians see that they are being authorized to observe without concealing that monitoring from the minor.

Legal risk and enforcement were recurring concerns. Several members said federal and other states' litigation against similar measures is common; one member observed that every state bill of this type so far has faced court challenges. Committee members asked the Attorney General's Office to attend a future meeting to advise on enforceability, litigation risk and rulemaking authority. Senators also requested that the AG coordinate rulemaking with state behavioral-health authorities (Department of Mental Health or other relevant agencies) to ensure technical rules addressing compulsive use and mental-health harms reflect appropriate expertise.

No formal votes were recorded in the transcript. The committee asked witnesses to submit written testimony and scheduled further consideration and technical amendments (including possible exclusions for certain video-game business models and the proposed 100,000-consumer threshold) at its next meeting.

Why it matters: S.69 would shift attention from content moderation to product design features and data-profiling practices that witnesses say amplify harm to minors. The committee must weigh where to draw the line between protecting children and keeping the law narrowly tailored to limit legal vulnerability and regulatory burden on small or regulated businesses.

What’s next: The committee asked the Attorney General's Office to appear and indicated plans to consider multiple amendments, including the 100,000-consumer exclusion and targeted language on video games and regulated industries. Dr. Radeski agreed to file written testimony for the committee record.