Committee advances substitute for Senate Bill 854 to limit minors’ social media time to one hour per service per day

The Communications, Technology and Innovation Committee on Feb. 17 voted to report Senate Bill 854 with a substitute that would require controllers or processors of social media platforms to use commercially reasonable methods to determine whether a user is a minor and to limit a minor’s use of a platform to one hour per day per service or application, while allowing a parent to increase or decrease that daily time limit.

The substitute, explained to the committee by Attorney May, removed earlier language that would have prohibited “addictive feeds” and instead required age verification and time limits. Attorney May told the committee the posted substitute “no longer includes language related to addictive feeds” and that it “requires any controller or processor that operates a social media platform to use commercially reasonable methods to determine whether users are minor and to limit a minor’s use of such social media platform to 1 hour per day per service or application and allow a parent to increase or decrease the daily time limit.”

Senator Van Valkenburg, the bill’s patron, described the substitute as a compromise from an earlier “addictive feeds” approach and said…