North Carolina youth social media ban clears additional hurdle as it heads toward Senate vote

Senators advanced a bill that would ban users 13 and under from “addictive” social media apps, despite concerns raised over government overreach and potential barriers to educational resources.

The Senate Judiciary committee passed House Bill 301 without objection on Wednesday. It will next head to the Senate Rules committee, where if it passes, it will go before the full Senate for a vote. The bill, which also sets out K-12 education policies on AI use and student training, passed the state House of Representatives last month.

Sen. Dana Jones (R-Forsyth) said the bill is aimed at keeping the state’s children safe.

“This is to protect our young children from social media, the addictive platforms. This would prohibit minors under 14 from having these addictive accounts, and then 14- and 15-year-olds would have accounts with parental consent,” Jones said.

NC Senate considers tax on obscene materials, social media age limits, license plate readers

The bill defines “addictive” social media platforms as any whose primary purpose is uploading content and viewing other users’ uploaded content, on which at least 10% of users under 16 spend two hours a day or more on average, which use algorithms trained on user data to select content, and which employ any addictive features like infinite scrolling, push notifications, video auto-play, and likes, shares, and reposts.

Following concerns over children’s data raised by Sen. Mujtaba Mohammed (D-Mecklenburg) on Tuesday, senators passed an amendment to the bill prohibiting platforms from selling the data of child users or using their data to inform algorithmic content recommendations and advertisements.

Though Senate Minority Leader Sydney Batch (D-Wake) previously suggested raising the age limit to users 17 and under, that recommendation did not become an amendment Wednesday. Nor did the request by a lobbyist for Meta to implement an age gate at the app store level, rather than requiring the apps to police themselves.

During public comment, lobbyist and former North Carolina state Rep. David Lewis urged senators to oppose the bill, which he called a “one-size-fits-all government mandate that ignores the rights of North Carolina parents.” He echoed Meta’s call for a bill that puts the onus of age restrictions on the app stores rather than the apps themselves.

“House Bill 301 is well-intentioned. But it’s not parental empowerment, it’s parental substitution. Other states have had similar laws struck down by the courts, which provides no protection for those kids,” Lewis said. “I urge you to consider an easier, more common-sense approach: require app stores to get parental approval before kids can get on one of these apps.”

Sen. Lisa Grafstein (D-Wake) asked her colleagues whether YouTube would be impacted by the legislation, noting that while it fits many of the criteria for social media platforms set out by the bill, much of its content also has educational value for students.

“YouTube is something that a lot of young people use,” Grafstein said. “I’m wondering if anybody has talked about or thoughts about that platform as one, because it’s also one where kids use the platform for education.”

Legislative staff were not able to definitively say whether YouTube would be defined as “addictive” under the criteria set out by the bill.

Kelly Stutts of Burlington, North Carolina, raised concerns that even as lawmakers are addressing the harms of social media, they are opening the door to AI in schools in the same bill. She cited the death by suicide of a 14-year-old in Florida following extensive use of the platform Character.AI.

“No children need to be on AI under age 16. Our brains need to be developed without these machines,” Stutts said. “AI does not belong in childhood, period.”