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SALT LAKE CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Utah Republican Gov. Spencer Cox signed new laws Thursday imposing new regulations on social media accounts, including limits on their use by minors and parental oversight, in the name of protecting children online.

S.B. 152, the Social Media Regulation Amendments, requires all social media users in the Beehive State to confirm they are 18 or older in order to set up an account and for minors to receive consent from their parents to do so, let parents access their children’s accounts, imposes a default curfew on social media usage that parents can adjust, forbids direct messaging of minors by strangers, keeps minors out of search results, and forbids data collection and targeted advertising on minors’ accounts.

H.B. 311, the Social Media Usage Amendments, makes social media companies liable for “any addiction, financial, physical, or emotional harm suffered as a consequence” of using their platforms. Both measures have cleared both chambers of the state legislature.

In addition, the state government has set up a new “Utah Protecting Minors Online” website, where residents can find more information on the law and the rationale behind them, as well as file complaints related to social media with the Utah Department of Commerce.

“When it comes down to it, [the bill] is about protecting our children,” S.B. 152’s lead sponsor, Republican state Sen. Michael McKell, told CNN. “As a lawmaker and parent, I believe this bill is the best path forward to prevent our children from succumbing to the negative and sometimes life-threatening effects of social media.”

“We can assume more methods like the Utah bill could find their way into other states’ plans, especially if actions are not taken at the federal level,” predicted ABI Research analyst Michael Inouye. “Eventually, if enough states implement similar or related legislation, we could see a more concerted effort at the federal level to codify these (likely) disparate state laws under a US-wide policy.”

While not discussed as often as Big Tech’s censorship of political views that conflict with the left-wing views held by most platform owners, children’s safety on social media platforms remains a subject of ongoing concern. Facebook, for instance, has been sued over teenage trafficking victims who met their pimps via its Facebook Messenger and Instagram platforms.

Their lawsuits accuse the company of negligence and product liability on the grounds that the platform offers “a point of first contact between sex traffickers and these children” and “an unrestricted platform to stalk, exploit, recruit, groom, and extort children into the sex trade”; and that the company failed to warn of or prevent its platform being used for sex trafficking, and even benefitted from the practice.

In 2021, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that Facebook could be held accountable for the crimes, as federal law allows states to hold websites civilly liable for facilitating human trafficking, whether through action or inaction.

Tech giants’ exploitation of users’ personal data is another are of ongoing concern, particularly in light of last fall’s revelations that Apple, for instance, can personally identify individual iCloud accounts, and by extension the name, email address, and data associated with it, despite public assurances to the country. Such concerns have prompted calls for legislation cracking down on companies’ access to user data without consent.

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