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Center for Humane Technology witness urges passage of S.69 to change platform design and protect children
Summary
Lizzie Irwin of the Center for Humane Technology told the Senate Institutions Committee S.69, the "age appropriate design code," would require online platforms to adopt "safety by design" and "privacy by default" measures for minors; no formal committee action was recorded at the hearing.
Lizzie Irwin, public affairs coordinator for the Center for Humane Technology, told the Senate Institutions Committee that S.69, the proposed "age appropriate design code," would require online platforms to design products with young users in mind and to limit harmful design and data practices.
Irwin said the bill rests on two core pillars — "safety by design" and "privacy by default" — and would establish a baseline duty of care for platform operators. "Companies are intentionally designing their products to capitalize on our cognitive deficits and exploit our very human tendencies," Irwin told the committee, adding that internal company reports show those practices are particularly harmful to young users.
The bill, as described by Irwin, would prohibit collection, sale, sharing or retention of personal data about minors that is not strictly necessary; restrict use of minors' data for content recommendation; turn off push notifications during late-night hours; disable direct messaging with adult users by default; disable push notifications by default for minors; and require clear tools for account deletion. Irwin said such design changes can shift business incentives so that safety, not raw engagement metrics, affects companies' bottom lines.
Irwin described the measure as modeled on legislation already in force in the U.K. and Ireland and offered examples of product changes in those jurisdictions: Snapchat defaulting accounts to private for users under 18; TikTok and Meta imposing restrictions on who can send direct messages to minors; TikTok disabling some late-night notifications for 13–17-year-olds; YouTube limiting comments on content posted by under-18 users; and Instagram offering ways to hide comments from specific users. "Kids no longer receive unsolicited outreach from strangers and are proactively protected by these limits," Irwin said.
A committee member asked whether media-literacy education for parents and teachers would be sufficient. Irwin replied that literacy efforts are important but reactive: "It would be better and safer from the beginning if people could be prevented or guided in such a way that you don't have to take on these literacy initiatives as stopgap measures," she said, noting unknown future design risks would otherwise require repeated policy responses.
Chair Harrison noted the bill had previously advanced in the legislature, saying, "But last year, it was approved unanimously by the senate." The hearing did not produce a formal committee vote; the committee paused to hear additional witnesses, including the attorney general and another listed witness, and to continue the record.
No formal motion or vote on S.69 was recorded during the portion of the hearing covered by this transcript.
